Labour kills. If the Tories were in opposition and Labour presiding over the scale of the current NHS emergency, Lynton Crosby, serial political strategy adviser to the Conservative party, would be merciless. His team would want the Tories relentlessly to pin the excess death toll on Labour. Boris Johnson, as leader of that opposition, would turn up the emotional amperage shamelessly. The needlessly dead in crowded A&E departments, hospital corridors or after long ambulance waits, courtesy of 13 years of Labour neglect and mismanagement, would be chronicled in excoriating detail by the rightwing media. The public would be enraged.
And the public would be right. But it is a Conservative government, media outrage is limited and the public has not turned vengeful. Certainly, it supports striking health workers. Yet so far the link between the 600,000 people who last October and November waited four hours or more in A&E before treatment, and death rates above past averages, is largely the province of statisticians and health experts. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) estimates that the current excess death rate is “roughly” between 300 and 500 a week, a claim disputed by both the NHS and the prime minister; be “careful about bandying around such numbers”, Rishi Sunak says, refusing to acknowledge that the NHS is in crisis. His caution is understandable: the Tory party is in danger of being labelled the death party.
