Diggin around the Tories' past pronouncements on the NHS - the ones that David Cameron wants to escape from - I came across a clip of Margaret Thatcher you might enjoy. Not the one about the NHS being "safe in our hands", but her justification for why she planned to go private for an operation she needed.
They were words that caused outrage but, amusingly for those watching how the two big parties are converging, now can be seen as a forerunner of this government's pledge to deliver patient choice within the NHS!
Watch the clip here...
Safe in his hands... that's what David Cameron wants people to think when they ponder whether to put him in charge of the NHS. Ever since Margaret Thatcher first used that phrase the Tories have struggled to fend off Labour accusations that secretly they yearn to break up the health service.
But today's speech marks more than mere political re-positioning. It represents a significant moment in the debate about healthcare in the UK. Many Tories - backed by not a few health experts - believe that taxes alone cannot fund the healthcare we need or indeed want, and they believe the UK will one day have to move to an insurance-based system like much of the rest of the world.
By declaring that will NEVER happen whilst he's leader, David Cameron has ruled out even debating the subject. Is it an embarrassing U-turn? Labour says so but of course that's the charge they also face as they now privatise parts of the NHS with abandon.
Proof that the politicians are learning what the NHS need and the public want? Or as one cynic put it to me - it's a story of the NHS for slow learners.
So Charles Kennedy promises to be "direct and aggressive" in a political fight he "relishes". The question is whether this is the eloquence and bravery of the condemned man or the words of a man who really has decided to "raise his game". The initiative lies with him.
The call by one of his MPs for an instant leadership contest is unlikely to win much favour since Mr Kennedy's enemies know he'd run in it and probably win. Their hope was that he got the message and walked away.
Some wanted a parliamentary coup like that organised by the Tories to topple IDS and install Michael Howard. In the Lib Dem version Ming Campbell is Howard and new rising star Nick Clegg is being lined up as their David Cameron.
The problem with this plot is that many party activists don't want it. They want Simon Hughes instead and he won't pass up the opportunity to be leader lightly.
And Mark Oaten doesn't want it because it would see his chance of leading disappear. So, until and unless the Lib Dems can unite behind the ABC candidate – Anyone But Charles – they are stuck with him.
Unless of course his relish for the fight disappears when there isn't a gun pointed at his head.
