I’ve received an email this afternoon from Mr Tony Blair’s Labour party – a mass mail jobby, as you’d expect. And I permitted myself a small smile…

Dear Labour supporter

Not off to a great start on the accuracy front, then, but never mind.

The Tories opposed the setting up of the NHS. They have opposed the investment and reforms of this Labour Government.

Unfortunately, he has failed to tell me exactly what Labour are going to do. The Tories might be terrible, but nothing here says Labour’s better.

Yesterday Michael Howard highlighted one case, that of a patient who had her operation cancelled several times… for Mr Howard to take one case and use it to undermine the whole of the NHS is typical and wrong.

Agreed. It does seem absurd to extrapolate individual cases to comment on the health service as a whole. It’s not logically sound.

When we launched our Proud of Britain campaign, and asked people what made them proud of Britain, the NHS came up again and again. Today we are putting just a sample of these “Proud of the NHS” testimonies on our website and we’re asking for new comments too.

But, erm, it’s absurd to extrapolate individual cases to comment on the health service as a whole. It’s not logically sound. Remember? You’ve just been telling me that… so why are you trying to pull that one on me?

The coming election will be a fight for the future of the NHS.

Obviously, much better for Labour to fight on the future than the eight years of government they’ve just had. Surely they should be proudly trumpeting their acheivements, not shying away saying ‘we’ll do better next time’.

Yours sincerely

The day Tony Blair says anything truly sincere in the run up to an election, I’ll dance a merry jig in Stockton town centre.

So, in summary, this hastily put together rebuttal of Michael Howard’s stinging attacks just makes Labour look more than a little bit silly.