With the NHS going through a particularly difficult period it is perhaps no wonder that punters rate the Health Secretary Steve Barker as having the best chance of being the next cabinet exit.

Some of the front pages this morning focus on the struggling service with suggestions that it won’t get back to “normality” until after Easter. What this means is that people who urgently need treatment are going to have to wait a bit longer. People will die prematurely.

I’ve always thought that the role of Health Secretary in a Conservative government is probably the most challenging because the Tories are not as ideologically supportive of the NHS as other parties. It takes a very smart Tory politician, like Jeremey Hunt a few years back, to survive.

What we are paying for at the moment is what happened when Osborne was Chancellor.

Mike Smithson

.