Editorial Thursday 15 November 2012: Notes on a Comrade

In the finest tradition of Russian Matryoshka dolls, NHS Commissioning Board chief executive Comrade Sir David Nicholson is - to borrow Churchill’s line about Russia - “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”, wrapped up in perhaps the most effective politician in Whitehall.

Politics is, after all, the getting, keeping and exercising of power. On those terms, the Comrade-In-Chief has no serious rivals, and few trivial ones.

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I have written about Comrade Sir David before - here in the context of glasnost, perestroika and being a lovably evil bastard; here in terms of the arrival of the Nicholson Health Service; and here about tight Stalinist controls.

Age doth not wither Comrade Sir David as a subject, but the specific launching point of this latest piece is his evidence to the Commons Health Select Committee on Tuesday.

The Comrade In Chief gave a glib “I don’t recognise that” answer to Rosie Cooper MP’s questioning about a significant conflict of interest at her local CCG (go to 10.32 by time). That is an unremarkable, tractor-production-line political answer to give a select committee. It’s a bit shit, of course, as answers go, and really quite contemptuous. There we go.

No, the moment in question is at 11.40 in the timeline, when Valerie Vaz offered Comrade Sir David “congratulations – how many health secretaries have you seen off so far?”

Comrade Sir David replied in a flash “five – they were all marvellous in their own way”. In a delightful Roger Moore tribute, he raised his left eyebrow as he said this.

What the fuck?

As I have said, the Comrade In Chief is a politician nonpareil.

Top-level politicians never do anything without a good reason.

And it seemds fair to say that Comrade Sir David has ambled a fair few yards beyond simple lese majeste to a politician who was actually … you know … elected.

Why did the Comrade In Chief do that, then?

It is not immediately obvious.

Perhaps Comrade Sir David thinks the future isn’t what it used to be.

Or perhaps Robert Francis does.