The New Statesman’s rolling politics blog   The real reason
Clegg saved the NHS bill  If the junior coalition party had
killed the bill, Cameron would have appointed a Lib Dem health
sec  The Budget has blown most other political news off the
agenda, so it is worth recalling that earlier in the week the
cabinet was celebrating what it thought was the passing of a
different headache: Andrew Lansley's NHS reforms. There was
apparently a hearty banging of the cabinet table on Tuesday in
celebration of the Health and Social Care Bill's gruesome
completion of its parliamentary odyssey. I suspect that
jubilation expressed relief rather than pleasure.  Either way,
it was premature. Downing Street is hoping that the noisy fury
around the NHS reforms will die down now that they aren't the
subject of legislative trench warfare, but no-one is so naive as
to think the issue will go away. Every increase in waiting
times, every closed ward, every bungled operation will now be
firmly blamed (fairly or not) on the choices ma