New Labour, new Stalinism

New Labour came to power promising to sweep away the “culture of fear in the NHS” engendered by the Tory government. Instead, “all staff should be allowed to speak their minds.” The BMJ played a prominent part—in 1987 and 1994—in documenting fear in the NHS. Our thesis, which we support with four articles in this week's issue, is that today little is different. There is still fear in the NHS. But there is also an intensification of “spin,” a word not much used when we wrote our previous pieces and strongly associated …