Is Jeremy Hunt to the NHS what Henry VIII was to the monasteries? | Giles Fraser: Loose canon

It was Benedictine monks who cared for the sick before Henry’s grand theft and destruction. No wonder our health secretary talks of a Reformation of the NHS

NHS reform is like the Reformation of the church, health secretary Jeremy Hunt told the British Medical Association this week. Well, I couldn’t agree more. But why does he seem to assume that the Reformation was an unambiguously good thing? For when it came to healthcare in England, it was an absolute disaster.

Beginning in 1536, Henry VIII – that psychopathic villain of kings – set about a series of legal procedures to dismantle the monasteries of England. To him, they represented the powerbase of allegiance to some foreign ideology. Not that Henry cared all that much about the likes of Luther or Calvin. Someone of Henry’s priapic dispositions wasn’t going to be all that persuaded by the reforming zeal of a few protestant fun-sponges with boring clothes and funny accents. No, what he hated most about the Catholic church was that it told him no – it denied him a divorce. And in his childish rage, he tore up the country.

Ignoring the fact that he was laying waste to a whole healthcare infrastructure, Henry was tapping a new revenue stream

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