Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth has spent the last few days banging out the Corbynite lines that Labour will “end Tory NHS privatisation” and restore a public NHS, even pushing the old Project Fear bluster that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US will involve the NHS being on the table, despite the Government repeatedly ruling it out. Of course Labour wasn’t always so opposed to dabbling in a bit of NHS/private sector crossover…

Between May 2002 and June 2007, 281 PFI deals costing the taxpayer £8 billion were signed off by then Chancellor Gordon Brown. Of this splurge, £7.7 billion went on 65 hospitals – money that, according to Ashworth’s current lines of argument, should have gone on front-line services instead. Who was a senior Special Adviser to the Treasury from 2002 to 2007? Jon Ashworth!