May wants to break with Thatcher’s legacy. More cash for the NHS is a start | Martin Kettle

The Tory leader’s pledge signals a possible break with dogma many in the party still cling to. Will she change their minds?

Brexit so often dominates our politics, as it did this week with yet another fraught House of Commons debate on how it is to be achieved. But, strange though it may seem, Europe is not the only epochal argument in British politics today. The implications of this week’s announcement about funding for the National Health Service run it very close, with one important difference. The Brexit argument is deafening in the public arena. The spending argument is not. It awaits its public voice.

Theresa May’s handling of the NHS spending announcement was mendacious and silly. Nevertheless this is big money, serious governmental stuff. It is an explicit recognition at the very top of the Conservative government that public spending can be politically and socially essential. Yet May’s party has yet to internalise that truth. May herself has a track record of public advocacy of this progressive kind – on the “just about managing” in 2016, on reform of social care last year, and now on health. But she also has a bleak record when it comes to acting on it.

Antonio Gramsci wrote of his sense that the old order was dying but the new was struggling to be born

Related: A warning to the Tories: Britain’s true-blue suburbs have turned liberal | John Harris

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