Andrew Lansley: Thatcher's man who's out to kill the NHS

Born in Essex, and son of a pathologist, Lansley’s first taste of politics came at the university of Exeter where he won a close battle to become president of the student guild against a communist candidate, securing support from Tory, Labour, and Lib Dem students.

After the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, he quickly sided with the hard-right of the Conservative Party, joining the Department of Trade and Industry as a civil servant.
In 1984, the year of the great miners’ strike, Lansley became Principal Private Secretary to Norman Tebbit, who was secretary of state for Trade and Industry. Tebbit was Thatcher’s right-hand man responsible for ruining working class communities, closing down the mines and launching a war against the poor. The poverty and unemployment caused by that policy are still felt in ex-mining towns across Britain today.
Tebbit’s ongoing war against trade unions made him a hero in Lansley’s eyes, and persuaded him to become a Tory politician.
After 1990 and the anti-Poll Tax movement, Andrew Lansley believed that the Tories should have stuck with Thatcher and her policies – he was against the party ousting her in a desperate bid to restore their popularity. He still believes they should have stuck with the “Iron Lady” to this day.
Nevertheless he played a key role in John Major’s victory in the 1992 election, which many believed could have been won by Labour. For this he received a CBE, a reward for service to “Queen and Country” which Lansley described as his “proudest moment.”
Nowadays, Lansley prefers not to dwell on his anti-union Thatcherite past. His official website says, “Coming from a public service family, he is committing to improving the NHS for everyone.” It’s a re-write of history if ever there was one.
Lansley got his political training in the most vicious anti-working class government this country has ever seen – and now he is back to finish off what Thatcher started, indeed what she never achieved: the destruction of the NHS.
 
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