Alex Phillips: Our NHS is the sacred cow of British politics

Our NHS, anyone else sick to the back teeth of that saccharine, sycophantic piffle?

I mean, yes, we all pay into it, and were forced to spend the best part of a year locked up like criminals to protect it, apart of course from the pre-ordained Thursday nights we were sanctioned to come to our doorsteps and applaud like a chorus of subservient seals for our hardworking doctors and nurses.

Note the prerequisite reference to the tireless commitment of medical staff every time you mention the NHS. Failure to do so will have you charged with treason.

But it doesn’t really feel like our NHS when your husband couldn’t get a face to face appointment to check that lump and now he’s passed away. Or when your last shot at IVF was cancelled and that pioneering drug in Berlin that could give you a year more with your kids is deemed bad value for money, but Mrs Insert Name Here flew in from Insert Country Here to get Insert Surgery Here on the British taxpayer.

The problem is you aren’t allowed to criticise it. The Sacred Cow of British politics, the football in the game of self-righteous faux-moral penalty kicks. The only thing this country has Nationalised that we must all deify in a manner that would make Lenin proud.

Ever deign to suggest missed GP appointments could be paid for, or a hybrid insurance model is worth exploring, and you are public enemy number one.

As a result, the rotating cast of Ministers who come in and put their stamp on it are only ever allowed to tinker at the edges, rearrange a few desks and appoint a few more diversity officers to remind doctors of birthing parents that it is racist to promote chestfeeding.

Meanwhile a pit of waiting vipers are curled up at their union headquarters to hiss about anything less than a 5000 per cent pay rise and spit venom at anyone who even thinks the word privatisation, because that of course means hoards of unscrupulous American pharmaceutical reps waiting by the burning wreckage of your car with clipboards.

But if we can’t have an adult conversation about the one service we all use, and that our lives literally depend upon, then frankly, it’s never ever going to get better, cut its waste, improve its outcomes and bounce into the 21st century fit for purpose. But here, at GB News, we are going to try, as we diagnose its problems, and see if we can prescribe it the cure it so desperately needs. If you are a left wing offensatron, switch channels now, as we are about to critique the NHS.