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29th June 2016

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Sir Andrew Dillon - boss of NICE, in conversation with Roy Lilley

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What's your plan, who is your person?

News and Comment from Roy Lilley

Like it or not, the Brexit-Thing is going to rumble around for the foreseeable.

Labour is in ruins, the Tories in shock, the media in a conniption and the main protagonists in hiding.

A campaign predicated on what has turned out to be, largely, the undeliverable, the aspirational and the dishonest.

What seems to me to be emerging; an unpacking of our relationship with Europe is not really what we want. An unpicking, maybe.

Whatever, it will take years and cost a fortune. In the meantime we will lose traction, lose business, lose money, lose standing and lose patience.

What I think we do want is to deal with economic migrants. So does Germany, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy. As does Poland, Rumania, indeed the whole of Europe needs an answer. The EU looks stuck like a rabbit in the lights of a fast car.

I fear, without reform it will fail. In or out, an EU failure is the last thing we want. A bigger EU, no. A better EU, maybe.

Economic migrants come, not only from Europe. Other continents are seeing their people on the move. Throwing away access to markets, grants, education, collegiate working, standards and all the rest, seems a high price to pay for the EU's inability to confront economic rebalance and our own inability to control non-EU migration.

Leaving the EU does not resolve a global phenomenon.

And, yes, we must deal with law making. Codifying our laws doesn't mean seeding superiority. I can't believe a matter concerning the law cannot be resolved by the lawyers.

What do we need? Two things. A plan and a person.

The plan.

The outcome of the referendum is not binding. Parliament is sovereign, they could ignore it. They shouldn't.

There is an election in the offing. If the Labour Party were better prepared they could stand on a Remain platform. My guess is they would be elected.

The Lib-Dems have announced this is just what they will do. Do they have the infrastructure to mount a national campaign?

There's talk of a new party...

So, Plan B.

The public must be given the opportunity to sign-off on whatever the final, negotiated upshot looks like. The EuroCrats, have to understand reshaping our future will take time and patience. Even if we wanted to, I doubt the complexities can be agreed and lined up much before 2020.

Pressing the Lisbon Treaty, Article 50 button any time soon, would be premature.

Signed-off? Another referendum or maybe even the 2020 General Election.

I think this looks sensible and more importantly, keeps public opinion front and centre. There are issues thrown up by uncertainty but we have to consider the nation's best interests in the longer run.

We have to have the opportunity to vote on the facts, not on the dissembling, obfuscation and lies we were served up, last time.

If you agree this looks like a plan, you might agree the next component, the 'person'.

You have to hope the next Prime Minister is the most unlikely candidate. The plan I have put before you is Jeremy Hunt, the NHS Tinkerman's plan. He is likely to step-up and seek election.

I know, I know... he comes with baggage. All politicians do.

Gove; his expenses claims, theatrical pictures, staged to embarrass the NHS and his insouciance.
Johnson; a very dodgy history whilst a journalist, flirtations with the truth, his flippancy.
Theresa May, well, maybe but inspirational?
Liam Fox; inveterate troublemaker.
Nicky Morgan, spooky-intensity.

The others... running away?

Hunt; he was trapped by Murdoch's craftiness and the junior doctors cunning, who, incidentally, have been shown to have a wider agenda than weekend working.

A privatiser? No, that was Labour's Alan Milburn.

As one wag put it on Twitter; will he use his negotiating skills to impose a settlement! Ho, ho...

Does any of this disqualify him? You can't sail through politics without collecting barnacles. And, he is running towards the problem, not running away.

He took on the NHS in the catastrophic state left by LaLa. He navigated the Treasury best he could and has given Tarzan and the Jim Reaper room to manoeuvre. He even left the JD strike to St David, alas who couldn't deliver for him.

A PM with a background in health policy would be no bad thing and if you don't fancy any of this, what's your plan and who is your person?

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roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net

Know something I don't - email me in confidence.

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