The response could not have been clearer when Woody Johnson, US ambassador to Britain, suggested that American firms would want access to the NHS in any post-Brexit trade deal. “The NHS is not for sale,” thundered the health secretary, Matt Hancock. “The NHS as a publicly run, publicly owned institution is part of our DNA,” added his predecessor, Jeremy Hunt, now foreign secretary.

This was a predictable response as political rivals seized on the ambassador’s “terrifying” comments, especially when both men are engaged in a leadership battle. But it is also untrue. Lucrative chunks of the NHS have already been handed to rapacious American healthcare giants with disastrous consequences. And this pair of posturing politicians have done little to thwart them.

Remember Winterbourne View, where