Putting patients first: the continuity of the consumerist discourse in health policy,from the radical right to New Labour

Abstract

This article seeks to comment on the extent to which the 'liberal conser vatism' of the New Labour government—liberal as in a celebration of market mechanisms, 'conservative' as in a prescriptive moralism—incor— porates the now less fashionable, but enduringly influential discourse of consumerism in its political agenda for the National Health Service, arguing that this marks a continuity with the politics of the last Conservative government.