58 Britain The Economist February 26th 2022
A taleoftwocrises
C
lichés arecommon in British politics. It is a land where a
week is a long time, dear boys are told to worry about events
and, more recently, everything is just like “The Thick Of It”. Some
clichés count more than others. Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow
health secretary, returns to one when attacking the Conservatives
on the nhs. “It’s not just that the Tories didn’t fix the roof while the
sun was shining,” Mr Streeting likes to say. “They dismantled the
roof and removed the floorboards.” This echoes George Osborne,
the former Conservative chancellor, who hammered Labour for
“fail[ing] to fix the roof when the sun was shining” during the glo
bal financial crisis.
If the soundbites are alike, that is because the predicament of
the Conservatives in 2022 is similar to the one Labour found itself
in after 2008. In both cases, a government faces a crisis in an area
where voters never fully trusted it. For Labour under Gordon
Brown, it was the economy in the wake of the financial crisis. For
the Conservatives, it is the health service in the aftermath of the
pandemic, with the prospect of 14mlong waiting lists. In neither
case is the government directly culpable. In both cases, it banks on
voter forgiveness. It was not forthcoming for Labour; it would be
heroic to assume it will be for the Tories.
Enormous waiting lists undo almost two decades of detoxifica
tion when it comes to the Conservatives and health. If the nhswas
“the closest thing the English have to a religion”, as the former
Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson put it, creating yet another
political cliché, then the Conservatives were once happy heretics.
Only after David Cameron took over in 2005 did the party start at
tending church. “Tony Blair once told us that his priorities could
be summed up in three words: education, education, education,”
he explained in one conference speech. “I can do mine in three let
ters: nhs.” Since returning to the top of politics, Boris Johnson has
joined the cause. As a columnist, Mr Johnson aimed kicks at the
health service, with its “starchbosomed nurses” and its some
times lousy care. As prime minister he is soppy. After a brush with
covid19, Mr Johnson declared that the nhsis “powered by love”.
Just now the nhsis hardly powered at all. About 6m people—
roughly one in ten—are already waiting for a procedure. By 2024,
when the next election is due, up to 14m people could be, or one infive.TheConservativeshaveat least been honest. Ministers admit
chewing through waiting lists will be miserable. Sajid Javid, the
health secretary, pledged to cut waiting times to under a year only
by 2025. The wait for diagnostic treatment will return to prepan
demic levels only then. An unpopular tax rise of 2.5 percentage
pointson national insurance will help clear the backlog, before
being put towards social care from 2023. The most uncomfortable
part of the levy is that it will only stop things becoming worse.
It is a familiar tale. For Labour, the financial crisis undid 15
years of detoxification. In the 1990s John Smith, Labour’s leader
between 1992 and 1994, launched a “prawncocktail offensive”, try
ing to charm bankers over dinner to no avail. (“Never have so ma
ny crustaceans died in vain,” mocked Michael Heseltine, a former
Tory cabinet minister.) It was only under Tony Blair and Mr Brown
that the rebrand was successful. Prudence became the watchword.
But by the time Labour left office, a crisisinduced deficit of 10% of
gdphad appeared. It was gleefully blamed by Mr Osborne on La
bour profligacy.
Neither party is to blame for the crisis, whether financial or vi
ral. But voters are rarely forgiving. Mr Brown handled the financial
crisis well, but it did him no favours in the 2010 election. So far,
voters have given the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt dur
ing the pandemic. But by 2024, the exceptional chaos of spring
2020 will be forgotten. Labour has already attacked the govern
ment for wasting £8.7bn (0.4% of gdp) on personal protective
equipment (ppe) at the height of the pandemic. The fact that, at the
time, governments were stealing ppefrom each other and nhs
staff were reduced to fashioning gear out of bin bags is forgotten.
Any residual glow from a successful vaccine rollout will have fad
ed. A bungedup nhs, with someone in every family on a waiting
list, will be a daytoday reality.
Both catastrophes exposed the failings of the government in
power. Under Labour, there were no complaints as the City
boomed unsustainably amid lighttouch regulation, flooding gov
ernment coffers with tax revenues. Criticism arrived only once it
went bang. Likewise, the pandemic revealed how austerity even
tually bled into areas supposedly protected from budget cuts, such
as the nhs. A lack of capacity in the care system left the elderly
stranded in hospitals. False economies jammed up the entire sys
tem, until the nhshad to deal with it. Boris Brown, Gordon Johnson
Voter cynicism may yet be a Tory saviour. Labour have for years
tried and failed to make political hay from the nhs. Ed Miliband
accused the Conservatives of destroying it, when it was just about
hanging together. Jeremy Corbyn said the Conservatives had plans
to privatise the service, which was untrue. Mr Johnson was able to
shrug off the assault. But when it comes to waiting lists, the at
tacks will be accurate. Conservatives may dismiss Labour wailing
as Cassandraesque. Cassandra was, however, right in the end.
Once formed, such reputations (“Labour cannot be trusted
with taxpayer money”; “the Conservatives break the nhs”) are
hard to lose. The Tories hammered Labour so hard that ministers
still appear on television to blame Labour’s mismanagement of
the economy more than a decade later. “The 2015 election was won
in the first six months after 2010,” says one former Conservative
adviser. Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, is still scrubbing at the
stain of fiscal ineptitude, wiping away inkthrown by the Conser
vatives in that era. When it comes to waitinglists,the roles are re
versed. Labour will happily repay the favour.nBagehot
A slow-burn crisis in the nhscould hole the Tories, rather as the financial crisis did Labour