The situation is now as bad as it was in the pandemic. What’s needed is a parliamentary coalition to confront the chaos
The gap between order and chaos is narrow. A Swindon patient waits 99 hours for a hospital bed. A Gwynedd woman lies screaming for 25 hours for an ambulance to arrive. It is said 500 people a week are dying for want of emergency care. Britain’s much-vaunted NHS appears to have hit a wall. Winter after winter it has cried crisis as numbers have surged towards capacity. Now everything has combined against it. Flu is piled on top of Covid, strikes are piled on care home blockages and labour shortages. Whitehall targets for ambulance waiting times, GP appointments and spare bed spaces have taken on the ghostly uncertainty of Chinese pandemic statistics.
Crises in health are unlike those in public services such as education and transport. They involve life and death. But given the fractured supply line from 999 calls to A&E admissions to hospital beds to care homes, it is hard to know where to point the finger of cause and effect. The whole system appears to be bursting at the seams.
