This extract is from the forthcoming publication by Prof Allyson M Pollock and David Price on the future of the national health service for the Centre for Labour and Social Studies ( Class ). This blog first appeared on Left Foot Forward on 25 March 2013. At 2.36 on the afternoon of Tuesday 27 March, 2012 the Health and Social Care Bill 2011 , repealing the legal foundations of the NHS in England, was given royal assent and became law. Campaigning groups, NHS staff and professional organisations had fought for nearly 2 years against what must count as one of the most regressive pieces of UK legislation of the last 60 years. That the bill became law in the end is testimony not to our robust democratic processes but to the autocratic power of government. The coalition came to office in May 2010 on a manifesto promising no further top-down reform of the NHS, and then promptly did the opposite. The bill passed into law without an electoral mandate because no major political p...