Tories hope NHS smears will help them cling on

Hell hath no fury like a bunch of posh boys worried they are going to be booted out by the sort of ordinary voter who normally goes through the servants’ entrance.

The phoney war and conference jostling are over.

That’s why the Tory encouraged Daily Mail has launched a series of big smears against NHS Wales. These are the first real shots in the General Election campaign.

The warehouse of lies and smears aimed at Labour and the Wales NHS is political shock and awe. It is meant to overwhelm. Setting the record straight against the sheer volume of lies and smears would read several volumes.

But the real battle is simpler than that. The idea behind the NHS was born in the mining valleys of South Wales, where the miners had a contribution-based self-help scheme for members and families who needed health care.

It was the practical example for the big thinkers who created the NHS. Those Welsh valleys produced Nye Bevan, the Health Secretary who was central to Labour’s creation of the NHS.

The Tories are attacking the NHS at its source, in Wales.

The smears are desperate, even by the standards of a party whose MPs complained that the creation of the NHS had been represented in the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.

Cameron has likened the border between England and Wales as the health service dividing line between life and death. But are killer Welsh dragons stalking the valleys eating NHS patients?

If you read the Daily Mail you may think so. The truth is Wales spends more on cancer care than England. The time from diagnosis to effective treatment in urgent cancer cases is quicker in Wales than In England.

No, there is not a stream of NHS “refugees” – the Tory Daily Mail’s word -  escaping  from Wales for better treatment in England. Patients from both countries cross the border to a hospital that is the nearest point of expert treatment.

15,000 Wales cancer patients are not treated in England – as the Mail claims. Patients from both countries cross the border to the nearest point of specialist treatment.

That’s why each year over 8,000 NHS patients from England are treated in Welsh hospitals, a number which has been growing year on year.

Highly specialist teams are built up in specialist centres of excellence where the best equipment and great expertise can be focused.

Morriston Hospital in Swansea is the specialist burns unit for Wales and the South West of England.

That is public sector skill and efficiency in operation. No wonder the Tories hate it.

For some people it is simply about which GP is nearer. Around 20,000 people living in England are registered with GPs in Wales. Fewer – around 15,000 – people living in Wales are registered with GPs in England.

Neither the NHS in Wales nor England is perfect. But the big dividing line is the different approach taken and the conjured ignorance displayed by Tory backing newspapers who dont let the truth get in the way of a story.

The NHS in England went through a pointless re-organisation that created a new tier of bureaucrats that wasted ÂŁ3 billion. The Tories encourage privatisation and prescriptions cost ÂŁ8.05 this year for each item rising to ÂŁ8.25 next year.

The Wales NHS is different. No costly and pointless re-organisation, privatisation is not being rail-roaded through and prescriptions are free.  Spending has been increased by an extra £500 million in Wales and Ed Miliband has promised a further £2.5 billion will be spent on the NHS.

These are two very different visions of how the NHS should be run. The Wales NHS is a challenge to the Tory way of doing things and so is the Labour spending promise.

Replying with smears and lies is a measure of how close the Tories know they are to an exit from Government. As the next general election looms the smears will get dirtier.

Caught in a two-front political pincer, the Tories are having a political nervous breakdown. Squeezed on one side by Labour and – for the first time ever -being outflanked on the right, by an even more right-wing party, UKIP.

Looking over each shoulder they have no clear strategy and have opted for quick and dirty tactical attacks or diversions such as threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights.

Labour may have to batten down the hatches at times and get ready for the bumpy ride. At other times it will need to put on a set of political knuckledusters because the fight will get dirtier before Cameron calls in the removals van.