I think Dianne Abbott will suffer for it come the next election. When she was talking on BBC2 about it, she seemed to have come to the settled conclusion that it was a price worth paying.

However, life IS complicated and few of us are completely free of hypocracy. I've always been a great supporter of the NHS and any treatment I've had has been through it. Last month, though, we paid for my wife to have an operation at a private clinic to have gallstones removed, because her friend had been waiting eighteen months to have hers treated under the NHS.   I don't think that it would have been a very moral position for me to insist she spends 18 months in pain 'as a matter of principle.' If anyone thinks that is hypocritical of me, I'll have to live with it. I would far rather it had been done under the NHS, but I wasn't prepared to pay that price.