Alan Milburn intervention risks sabotaging Labour win

Labour risk throwing away their ace card in the general election campaign as a result of the internecine war that has exploded between former Labour Health Secretary Alan Milburn and the party’s current shadow health minister Andy Burnham over their prescription for the NHS's ills.

Milburn's warning to Labour leader Ed Miliband that his campaign on the NHS is a "pale imitation" of the disastrous campaign by Neil Kinnock in 1992 has captured the headlines today in The Times and other national newspapers just when Miliband had been hoping to dominate the news with his ten-year plan for sorting out the problems facing the health service.

Milburn, who served as Health Secretary between 1999 and 2003, horrified Labour traditionalists at the time with his NHS reforms, and is now accused by some within the party of seeking to sabotage Laboru's hopes of victory on 7 May.

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• Countdown to 7 May: check The Week's daily election round-up

Milburn told Radio 4’s World at One yesterday: “It would be a fatal mistake, in my view, for Labour to go into this election looking as though it is the party that would better resource the National Health Service, but not necessarily put its foot to the floor when it comes to reforming.”

This is infuriating - and potentially devastating - for Miliband who, with daily reports of the scandalous state of some overstretched NHS services, has succeeded in making the NHS the priority issue, above immigration and the economy, for Labour.

A YouGov poll for The Times found 43 per cent supported Labour's priority of spending more money on the NHS rather than reducing the deficit. A ComRes poll for ITN News found 50 per cent make the NHS their priority voting issue ahead of immigration and the economy.

Voters can be excused for being confused by Labour's civil war over the NHS, pitting Milburn against Burnham.

Milburn is an arch-moderniser from the Blair era who in 2000 dramatically shifted Labour policy by unveiling a concordat between the NHS and private health care companies allowing patients to be treated in private hospitals but free on the NHS.

Burnham, on the other hand, has gone from Blairite to Bevanite by calling for an end to all private sector involvement in the NHS. The battle is described by Times columnist Rachel Sylvester as "two tribes go to war".

Yet Miliband has support from an unusual quarter this morning - former SDP leader Dr David Owen who delivered a blistering attack of the coalition’s NHS reforms on the BBC’s Hardtalk programme.

Owen, who famously left Labour to form a new modernising party, said the priority for whoever wins power on 7 May should be the repeal of the 2012 Tory health legislation introduced by former Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley which was attacked for privatising the NHS.

Unfortunately for Miliband, nobody listens much these days to Owen; most commentators like Sylvester support Milburn and the modernisers.

Milburn isn't attacking Miliband on the NHS alone - he has also co-authored, with John Hutton, an article in the FT in which he blames the two Eds (Miliband and Balls) for not standing up for the last Labour's government's economic record and distancing themselves from New Labour. In a tweet, John Prescott has charged the authors with being "collaborators".

So why is Milburn risking sabotaging Miliband's campaign for election victory? It’s partly because of ego - he wants to stop Miliband rubbishing the Blairite legacy – but it’s also his conviction that he is right.

Miliband and Burnham have rejected the Blairite prescription and are committed to throwing more money at the NHS, which is highly popular with the health service unions. Milburn may be right to warn that money alone won't be enough. But the publicity his warning has attracted could ruin Miliband's hopes of winning power on 7 May.