The UK election is less than a week away and after 14 years in power, the Conservative Party is expected to lose. At the top of the public’s list of grievances is the country’s crumbling National Health Service and how it was desperately underfunded before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. A massive inquiry is currently underway examining how the British government handled COVID-19, and former prime minister Boris Johnson has admitted “there were unquestionably things we should have done differently”. The COVID-19 years loom large as one of the most terrifying and deadly periods in British history — far deadlier than the German bombing raids during World War II. Over 232,000 people died of the virus, wait times at hospitals hit record highs and the health system is still dealing with a backlog of patients. But Britain’s health system was already woefully underfunded and unprepared when the pandemic arrived. So how was the NHS allowed to fall into disrepair and brought to the edge of collapse, right as a catastrophe hit?
Nye Bevan’s vision
The NHS is beloved in Britain. During COVID, Boris Johnson called it the country’s greatest asset. Former chancellor Nigel Lawson called it “the closest thing the English people have to a national religion”. It was founded in 1948 by a Welshman named Aneurin Bevan — known to everyone as Nye. He was a hardcore socialist and clashed with just about everyone who wasn’t. Winston Churchill famously described him as “a projectile discharged from the Welsh valleys”. After the Labour Party won a landslide election in 1945, Bevan was surprisingly appointed to the position of health minister. At the time, the British health system was a mess. Some hospitals were run by charities, some were run by local governments, some were run by insurance companies. It meant that richer parts of the country got far better care than poorer parts. Nye Bevan was handed a blank cheque to fix this and his proposal was extraordinary — all of Britain’s hospitals would be nationalised and come under the control of the health minister. Using around 5 per cent of the government budget, health care would become free for everyone in Britain.
NHS’s rise and Bevan’s fall
There was massive opposition to the NHS from doctors, specialists and hospitals, who up until this point were their own bosses, but with money and compromise, Bevan brought them around. Nye Bevan was on the verge of becoming a national hero and had a real shot at becoming the next Labour prime minister. “There is nowhere in any nation in the world — communist or capitalist — any health service to compare with [the NHS],” he said. But on the 4th of July 1948 — the day before the NHS was due to begin — Nye Bevan reminded everyone of his rabble-rousing roots. At a rally in Manchester, he said, “No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep, burning hatred for the Tory Party. It completely overshadowed Bevan’s NHS achievement. Even newspapers in Australia reported on it. For years, Winston Churchill hammered him with it every chance he got. Young Tories started “vermin clubs”. The Labour PM publicly condemned him. The NHS rollout was also not flawless. It cost double what Bevan had initially projected, as millions of poor people with long-term ailments came out of the woodwork now that health care was free. When the government tried to claw back some of the money by making people pay for half the cost of false teeth and eyeglasses, it was the last straw for Bevan. He quit over dentures, but the NHS and his legacy endure.
Funding flatlines
Three things have been rising in parallel since the 1970s — Britain’s median age, Britain’s life expectancy and the cost of the NHS. And yet as the need for services has gone up, the budget for the NHS has flatlined in recent years. Politicians and the public alike defend the NHS passionately, yet British governments are constantly surprised by its cost and try desperately to find ways to make it cheaper. When David Cameron took power in 2010, he assured the public he understood the importance of the NHS and could be trusted with it. He promised to isolate the NHS from the austerity program he was rolling out across Britain. “We said five years ago that we were the party of the NHS, and now in government, by protecting the NHS from spending cuts, we are showing precisely that priority we’ve talked about so much in our party.” But Britain’s aging population meant that more doctors, nurses and funding were needed every year to maintain the same quality of care. Waiting lists began to grow. Overworked staff began quitting and the NHS was unable to find replacements for them. The Labour Party began to attack Cameron for creating a crisis in the NHS, which Cameron angrily denied. But the figures speak for
