New labels, same old rot

It is simply a device to change the labels on old sauce bottles that the public has discerned as putrid while leaving the contents as rotten as ever.

Switching the Minister for Giving Murdoch What He Wants to the Health Ministry may spare health workers the sound of Andrew Lansley's voice, but it won't mean a change of policy.

The conservative coalition is committed to handing over the NHS to private health suppliers until the postwar Labour government's jewel in the crown is tarnished beyond recognition.

The idea that Jeremy Hunt could, in contrast to Lansley, listen to the concerns of patients, professionals and unions about the Health and Social Care Act is wishful thinking.

Transport unions and campaigners too can expect no variation in the planned assault on our railways, based on the McNulty report, which will deliver job cuts, ticket office closures and rising fares as government subsidies are reduced.

Outgoing transport secretary Justine Greening has been sacked in response to private airline lobbying.

Her exit signifies that Cameron will renege on elections pledges not to approve a third runway at Heathrow and will parade this U-turn as essential to the economy.

In reality, this potential profits bonanza for a handful of transnational construction campaigns will herald higher carbon emissions, demolition of large numbers of homes, misery for people living in Heathrow flight paths and destruction of the environment.

Some commentators represent Ken Clarke's replacement by Chris Grayling as justice secretary as a rightward shift, which indicates an element of wishful thinking.

Clarke's affable, beer-drinking, jazz aficionado image and his affection for the European Union should not be mistaken for liberalism or humanity.

Margaret Thatcher's axeman against state education and health spending in the 1980s has retained his neoliberal economic approach, coupling this with state authoritarianism manifest in the Justice and Security Bill, with its plan for secret trials to hide government embarrassment.

Bringing in Grayling is Cameron's way of placating backbenchers who expect him to tell the European Court of Human Rights to get stuffed when the government is caught bang to rights over breaching international law.

Grayling made his views on equality clear two years ago in publicly backing the right of bigoted hotel owners to ban gay couples from their premises on the grounds of "conscience." His tenure should be eventful.

No less potentially interesting is the new partnership between Education Secretary Michael Gove and his Liberal Democrat junior minister David Laws.

Laws said before the last election that Gove's "educational marketplace" approach risked "being vastly oversold and will fail to deliver higher standards."

Baroness Warsi must wonder why she is cast aside as Tory Party chairman (sic) following her difficulties over parliamentary expenses and ministerial rules when Laws can return to government, displacing the only Liberal Democrat woman minister, after having had to step down once for making unjustifiable expense claims.

Cameron has succeeded in creating the first all-white Cabinet for 15 years, reducing the number of women ministers and exposing his Cabinet as representative, personally and collectively, of society's 1 per cent elite.

His decisions should encourage a mass turnout for the TUC and STUC-organised A Future that Works national protests on October 20 to defeat this profiteers' government.