ABSTRACT
To be elected politicians surely pose and answer the question of ‘what is a political party for?’ And ‘Why do we want power?’ There are fundamental issues about the funding, provision and consumption of health and social care which will engage them at the coming general election. During more than a decade in opposition, too, the Conservative Party accepted the arguments of the liberal intelligentsia in favour of the state controlled National Health Service (NHS). Every other instrument – such as the ‘public value’ idea and an NHS constitution promoted by Mr Gordon Brown and Mr David Cameron – is, however, blunt and rusty. Mr Cameron has headlined his party as ‘The party of the NHS’. The economists Anthony Downs and Duncan Black first offered an analysis of the ‘economic theory of democracy’, which suggested that the self-interest of politicians prompted a market exchange between votes and benefits in the political process.
