The brief flourishing of Blairite reform did leave a legacy, and a few private clinics in the system. Research has shown that patients are likely to receive better care (and are less likely to die) in areas with a genuine choice of hospitals. When my father was referred for an hernia operation in Bath, he was amazed to find himself in a Norman Foster-designed private clinic – as an NHS patient. That hospital, run by Circle Healthcare, now stands as a memorial to what might have been – had the trajectory of reform been kept up.

The problem with reforming a bureaucratic empire is that such empires tend to strike back. One doctor tells me that all help given to independent clinics “has had to be forced from the top, against resistance” and that help from on high has now been “effectively withdrawn”. The feeling amongst those who run private clinics is that politicians don’t have the energy to wrestle with the system and even Simon Stevens, the NHS’s chief executive, is no longer keen on the reforms he helped design when working as an adviser to Blair.

The Tories lost a good chance, this week, to talk about proper reform. How protecting the NHS is about more than money – and whether Gosport-style failures may be repeated if the national health service remains trapped in such bureaucracy.

But this Conservative government is choosing its battles and it has decided not to fight for the future of the National Health Service. Which is a shame. At its 70th birthday, it really deserves better.