Everybody has a horror story about NHS waiting lists. If it isn’t you, then it’s probably your neighbour, your friend, your elderly parent; trapped in an anxious, miserable limbo for months longer than they should have been, getting passed from pillar to post. The only thing we don’t all know about waiting lists, it turns out, is that actually they’re coming down.
Barely a quarter of the public in England knew waiting lists had fallen in Labour’s first year in power, according to recent polling for the Health Foundation thinktank in September: more than a third thought they had just kept going up, presumably because that’s what we have become gloomily resigned to. Since waiting lists are one of those emotional yardsticks by which people judge whether the country is falling apart or not, you would think the government might like to mention this, and indeed this week it planned to. But then someone close to Keir Starmer chose to accuse the health secretary of plotting a coup two days before a planned speech on NHS reform, accidentally ensuring that Wes Streeting’s pre-booked stint on breakfast telly was mostly spent debating whether the prime minister is toast or not. Streeting emerged a picture of injured innocence, while reminding everyone how much better he is at this stuff than the boss. Well done, everyone, and now back to the bit that actually affects anyone hoping to see a GP this side of Christmas.
