The Conservative Government admitting the National Health Services is on the brink of collapse as it prepares to put up tax for everybody is a damning admission of 12 years of Tory failure.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt, who as the longest serving Health Secretary in the history of the NHS shoulders much responsibility for this disaster, is an undertaker burying not only our most precious public service but also the living standards of tens of millions of Britons.
Increasingly vocal leaders of doctors and the rest of the health workforce deserved to be heeded or the Tories slashing key services with a scalpel will hurt us all.
Thursday’s spending cuts and tax increases will hammer fresh nails in the Tory coffin because that party’s incompetence and warped politics is costing people dear, Britain’s economy since Covid doing much worse than major competitors.
Balancing the books on the backs of already struggling families is both unfair and will backfire, financially and politically.
The austerity to be intensified by Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is madness, illegitimate punishment meted out by a Government without authority or popular acclaim and running scared of a General Election that would deservedly sweep it away.
Lest we forget
A King not the Queen leading tributes to the military fallen on Remembrance Sunday at the Cenotaph in Whitehall was a changing of the royal guard.
Such a prominent fixture at national moments for seven decades, the absence of Queen Elizabeth II and presence as monarch of King Charles III is a relatively fresh change that still requires some getting used to.
Ranks too of veterans from past conflicts are thinned every November yet unchanged is the comradeship of men and women who served together.
We owe a debt of honour that must never be forgotten to those who, as poet John Maxwell Edmonds so poignantly expressed their sacrifice, for our tomorrow gave their today.
Sting in tale
Stung by a scorpion and treated by medics in the jungle, yelping Matt Hancock is expected to make a full recovery which is more than he could say about his political career.
The health of I’m a Celebrity’s unlucky arachnid is unknown.
