Some people go to the NHS and get a service which may involve delays and not seeing a specialist but is free. A second lot of people pay fees, in addition to their taxes, to go private and get seen by a specialist fairly soon. Now it seem we may have a third tier of the health system. If you are Tony Blair, you get priority treatment, you are seen by a specialist and it is free.

Perhaps this is what Tony Blair when he boasted he would introduce a new Third Way in British politics.

Don't bother asking if you, too, can have 'priority treatment' which does not affect other patients. Only Tony Blair, and perhaps other members of the Politburo, receive this.

It is surprising that the news media have not investigated this 'priority treatment' further.

I suppose the origin of Mr Blair's 'priority treatment' is this: as a busy man, he could not be kept waiting for NHS treatment like an ordinary citizen. As a Labour Party leader, however, it would look bad if he went private. So he has now experienced a kind of fake NHS treatment in which he was rushed to the front of the queue. It is, bluntly, a corruption of power and an insult to the intelligence of the populace. If he believes the NHS is a good system and that the billions of extra taxpayers' money he has taken has been well spent, he should be prepared to experience the reality of the NHS, not a fake version of it.

UPDATE: I have just talked to one of the authors of the Daily Telegraph story who tells me that Downing Street gave few details of what had happened but he understood that Mr Blair got a 'swift appointment'. In other words, he got treatment at a speed and with a convenience not available to everyone else.