The Tories introduced the 50% strike ballot threshold to make industrial action harder. MATT WRACK argues that a Labour government has no justification for leaving it on the statute book
AS USUAL at this time of year, the headlines are full of the so-called “winter crisis” in the NHS, with talk of “pressures” and “demand” recited almost unchallenged as the cause of the disaster.
But it is vital to be clear that the NHS is not merely collapsing, it is in a state of induced collapse. When the Conservative government came into power in 2010, a healthy NHS quickly went into such decline that what were at first regular “winter crises” became year-round crisis and then collapse.
Public satisfaction with our health service went into freefall, from a record high of over 70 per cent in 2010 to the current day reality of 36 per cent between 2020 and 2021 and arguably even far less now.
The new PM’s opening addresses offered hope, council homes and reform — but little detail on how any of it will be delivered, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
CLAUDIA WEBBE says the horrific price British patients will pay for this NHS deal is now clear — and there’s time to get out of it, if MPs will only force the issue
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint
1943-2025: How one man’s unfinished work reveals the lethal lie of ‘colour-blind’ medicine


