Today’s row about Accident and Emergency has little to do with the issue itself, and far more about one party trying to prove a point about the other. Those rows are the most vitriolic, the most hard-fought, and to the outside world, the most pointless.
The King’s Fund today finds waiting times are at their worst level for nine years. What’s going wrong? Each side has its own theories. But what’s significant is that each side is trying to use this row to steal that coveted ‘party of the NHS’ title. This was abundantly clear from Andy Burnham’s response to the report, written in what appears to be a spitting rage. Normally press statements from any party are just too dull to reproduce in full, but the shadow health secretary’s quotes are worth reading:
‘The revelation that A&E waiting times have hit a ten-year high under David Cameron demolishes once and for all the Tory spin that the A&E crisis has nothing to do with them.
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