Her husband was entirely right to overturn the original coroner’s verdict of death from natural causes in order to expose a frightening story of medical incompetence at a famous private hospital. Private hospitals, nursing agencies and insurers are not consistently more efficient or safer than the NHS. But neither is the public sector automatically better than the private. The variations in death rates in the NHS make this clear.However, the broader point is as true for health care as it is for education or railways. The search for better public services should be open to good ideas and good practice from wherever they come.

Mrs Touche’s death should act as a warning that lax procedures and poor management can be found in both public and private sectors, and that equal vigilance is needed in both.. Maybe, when he returned to the White House after his inaugural gala on the night of 20 January 2001, George Bush allowed himself reasonably to believe that things might be a little better in a year. Having won the presidency in the most controversial circumstances for a century, he had earlier in the evening almost wrenched his daughter Jenna out of her ballgown in a particularly clumsy pas de deux. That morning he was down in Florida peddling his education reforms with the air of a man who had nothing better to do. That night he was the tentative leader of a stunned nation, as always struggling to find the right words.But within 10 days, an inspirational visit to Ground Zero in New York and a rousing address to Congress had changed everything. At this moment Bush bestrides American politics as few of his predecessors.

The metamorphosis – not so much of the man as of public perceptions of him – is astounding. This once most inconsequential of politicians has acquired gravitas No one refers to him as “Dubya” any more. The sobriquet belongs to another age, another man.These things never last. But for the moment, Mr Bush is enjoying that highest state of political grace – where nothing sticks. For weeks, commentators have been poised to pounce on any hint of frailty.The Enron affair, with its suggestions of collusion between the new Republican administration and the disgraced energy company, seemingly confirming the Bush administration as the Washington lobbying arm of the Texas oil industry, in another time might have had the desired effect But so far, not a bit of it. If anything, the opposite is true.Some bombshell disclosure may yet upset every calculation. But in his handling of Enron, Mr Bush’s admirers even detect the emergence of a “Bush doctrine”, summed up in the slogan adopted by Nancy Reagan in the war against drugs: “Just Say No”.