Tory Troubles on the NHS

With luck, the Conservative Party may this week have learnt a little about consultation processes. Their "bare-knuckled" fight with the Government over NHS closures resulted in a self-inflicted wound; quite clever really!
Politically it's always disastrous when your research howlers become the story instead of the message you set out to deliver, and I suspect their mistake was to include in the "threatened" list of hospitals, any that had ever featured anything approaching a downgrading (rationalisation, changed opening hours, procedures etc) in a consultation.
Many NHS Trusts that had posed such options, but rejected them, were quick to point out the mistake. In the Tories' defence, they probably had a phalanx of local activists who don't believe that such decisions are final and are fearful that the same proposals will re-surface.
The truth is that local consultation is vital for the health service - and for other public service providers because situations on the ground are very complex, and that its a brave person that can pontificate or generalise without serious investigation and preferably dialogue.
It would be far better for the Conservative Party - or other interested parties - just to take part fully in those consultations, engage in proper reasonsed debate, and then if they disagree - by all means carry the fight into the political bearpit.
But to lump together proposals from consultations current, past and still to come was a recipe for trouble.
Fools rush in .........!
They'll be more careful next time.