Philip Collins
(Picture: Daniel Hambury)When Maria Caulfield, the junior health minister, replied to an urgent question in the House of Commons by Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, on the ambulance crisis, she said she did not want to play politics with the National Health Service. It is a lovely thought but wholly naïve. As Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss compete with one another to see who can brief nastier nonsense about refugees, one of the issues that could sink their premiership is getting worse, and now it is screaming out at them from all the front pages.
The Conservative Party is always vulnerable to a decline in health services. That is why the NHS was exempt from the worst of austerity during George Osborne’s time as Chancellor. In retrospect, Jeremy Hunt, the nation’s longest-serving Health Secretary, did a good job, for all that he inspired the enduring hostility of the doctors, in just keeping the Tories competitive on health.
