The Doctor Won't See You Now: The UK's Cost-of-Surviving Crisis
Britain’s cost-of-living crisis may be the most immediate challenge for the Tories, but the growing list of problems at the NHS is the real long-term threat.
The NHS needs help.
Photographer: WPA Pool/Getty Images EuropeThere is no shortage of grim headlines in the UK right now. Britain is facing catastrophically high living costs, a steady drumbeat of strike action and potential blackouts this winter. So, here’s another cheery thought: The breaking point for this government may be a cost-of-surviving crisis.
A certain amount of pain from rising energy prices can be absorbed with the appropriate level of government intervention and messaging (granted, neither are yet in evidence). Britons can invoke the “spirit of the blitz” to turn down the heat in cold months, don an extra layer and run fewer cycles of the washing machine. But hell hath no fury like a population that can’t access health care.