Is there nothing new under the sun when it comes to NHS reform? This week, the Government has been making announcements that feel eerily familiar.

First we had Alan Milburn warning that the health service was “drinking in the last chance saloon”, which he first said back in 1999. Then we had Wes Streeting announcing a rigorous performance management plan for the NHS, using phrases like “no holds barred” and “no more rewards for failure”.

So far, so very familiar, almost as though Labour thinks that serving up the Blair years on a plate will solve the problems facing the service today.

In fairness to Streeting and Milburn, those New Labour years did see a lot of radical thinking on healthcare reform and improvements that followed a lot of investment. The reform and money were, then as now, a response to a genuine fear that the NHS was struggling so much that public consent for a taxpayer-funded system might start to fall away.

Milburn first warned about the “last chance saloon” during a dinner with the medical royal colleges, not long after he had become health secretary. His warning was then followed by his NHS Plan, signed by the presidents of those........

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