THERE is no worse cabinet job for a Conservative than secretary of state for health. Everything you accomplish,however benign or banal, is viewed as a covert attempt to privatise the National Health Service. And there is no worse time to be health secretary than during a period of austerity. Since 2010 spending on the NHS has increased by barely 1% a year in genuine terms, and compared with 6% in 2000-09. Yet Jeremy Hunt has been in the hot seat since September 2012,and is just two months away from becoming the longest-serving health secretary in history.
Mr Hunt has survived everything that the political furies could dream up. He weathered the first strikes by NHS doctors for 40 years. He endured the recent “winter of discontent”, which saw the NHS postpone all non-urgent operations (about 55000 in all) for a month, or as patients slept in hospital corridors. He even dodged the sack. In January Theresa May tried to dawdle him to the business department,but he persuaded her not only to sustain him in his job, but to...
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Source: economist.com