I would bet my years salery tho that the scbu has had year on year budget increases.

In keeping with inflation and *actual* costs?

It is also worth bearing in mind that Harrogate and District PCT was performing very well with amazing levels of care and very good budget management for many years. Scarborough PCT was (and still is) hugely in debt. In order to manage this debt, they created a new PCT taking budgets from the Harrogate area and redistributing to the Scarborough area. It was because of this that IVF provision was stopped in 2006. No doubt other services were cut at the same time.

We have a two party system (we pretend otherwise).

Not really – parties are coalitions internally two. Most likely we have at least six parties: the left and right wings of Labour and Tories, the completely batshit right wing of the Tory party, and the Lib Dems (which is more of a smear than a bloc). Blair's impact was so strong because he had a Blairite majority so that he didn't have to rely on the left wing of the Labour party.

And then of course there's the 4 party systems in Wales, NI, and Scotland.