On the edge of meltdown

Industrial action by staff in the National Health Service this week sends two stark warning messages to the Government. The first concerns low pay. Even with inflation falling, wage rates have not kept pace and large swathes of the population are suffering falling living standards – and not from a high baseline. In the case of NHS workers, that is the result not of market forces but of a deliberate decision by the Government to reject the recommendations of an independent pay review body. These NHS employees are also voters. It is difficult to imagine them enthusiastically supporting political parties that have consciously chosen to make them poorer.

The second is politically even more serious. The finances of the NHS are in a mess. Not only did an unnecessary, complex and inefficient reorganisation drain some £3 billion from an already overstretched budget, but current projections show many parts of the health service heading towards bankruptcy as income and expenditure drift ever further apart. The Government seems paralysed by the prospect of catastrophe for the nation’s health and welfare, with an election only months away. The one fundamental truth of British politics is that people cherish the National Health Service. It still stands as a beacon of Britishness, of the spirit of solidarity, of “one for all and all for one” that has been eroded in many different ways but that people still cling to.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot win the next election for the Tories single-handed but he can certainly lose it for them, if substantially more funds are not quickly poured into the NHS financial black hole. He would also be wise to remedy the injustice that led to the strike this week. It is rarely good advice for a government to panic, but on this occasion that might be the prudent thing to do.