Editor's blog Wednesday 15 June 2011: The Conservative Home view of NHS reform-squared's winners and losers

Good morning. Bit busy today, so this is a signpost to Tim Montgomerie's excellent analysis on Conservative Home of the winners and losers of the NHS reform-squared debacle.  (If any further changes are made in Committee, we get reform-cubed, and any in the Lords will be reform-disco: four on the floor).

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Click here for details of 'Strongman Cameron's J-turn on NHS reform: neo-classical clinical senates (or what did the Romans ever do for us?)', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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Montgomerie confirms in his first point that (as I wrote yesterday), in Conservative policy philosophy, choice is a synonym for competition. This isn't a sophisticated point, but it's escaped a lot of people.

It is unsurprising to find that health select committee chair Stephen Dorrell had been warning backstage that the opportunity cost of the reforms was too high.

Montgomerie concludes that Andrew Lansley may be safe until after the 21012 Olympics, as he tips Jeremy Hunt as heir presumptive.

He may well be right: That Nice Mr Cameron has been forced to invest so much political capital in Secretary Of State For The Time Being that to also be compelled into a reshuffle (even a little one) would be unacceptable.

However, The Fingernails Club is no place to be, when you're on a brief as tough as health. Just ask Lord Crisp.