In its submission to the consultation, the National Clinical Forum - a panel of leading doctors set up to give advice to health boards on service change - said plans to maintain secondary care at four hospital sites were "unsustainable" and that a two-centre model was the "only option with a chance of longer-term sustainability".

BBC: Hywel Dda Health Board to close Mynydd Mawr hospital

What he failed to do was convince Blairite ministers that he would be on their side in accelerating the involvement of the private sector in public-service delivery, particularly by increasing capacity and breaking down monolithic provision in health care and secondary education.

ECONOMIST: Poor old Gordon Brown. Yet again Tony Blair has upstaged him