"Get Brexit Done" - This is the slogan chosen by UK Prime Minister and Party Leader Boris Johnson for the December 12th general election. The former mayor of London hopes to win a majority in the House of Commons in hopes of finally implementing the Brexit and therefore focuses his campaign on this theme. But the state of the health system (National Health Service or NHS) is emerging more and more as a priority issue for British voters.
The president of the British Medical Association (BMA), Chaand Nagpaul, put this issue on the agenda of the candidates on 2 November last, claiming that the NHS "is heading for an unprecedented crisis this winter, "the most complicated season to manage for British hospitals. "We should not need an election to realize how bad the situation has become," he said in a cry of alarm that seemed intended for the Conservative Party, in power since 2010.
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Although the population is aging and the cost of advanced medical treatment is increasing, state spending on the NHS has averaged only 1.5% per annum in the last decade . A figure well below the 3.7% average annual growth in spending the National Health Service had experienced since its inception in 1948. "The NHS has been significantly underfunded in the last decade," says Jonathan. Holmes, a public affairs consultant at King's-Institute, a British think-tank in the health field.
To show that the Conservative Party is taking this issue seriously, the website The-Conservative-Home - the Bible of the most ardent Conservative activists - posted an article on 9 November entitled "Is the Conservatives' campaign will head first in a winter crisis of the NHS-? "
Promises of budget increase
Statistics predict a new crisis this winter. October's NHS data, published on 14th November, showed that there has never been so much emergency room waiting in England.
"More than 80-000 very sick patients have had to wait more than four hours to get a hospital bed last month, even though temperatures are not yet very low in England, and there is not too many influenza outbreaks or gastroenteritis, "warned Patricia Marquis, the director of the Royal College of Nursing in England, at a press conference on 14 November. "Many of the nurses I talk to are very worried about not being able to deliver proper care when winter is here," she added.
Shortly after the BMA's alarm call in early November, the weekly The-Observer revealed that Boris Johnson was preparing to weather the NHS winter crisis by setting up a dedicated team in the heart of 10-Downing Street. to the supervision of the NHS - a first for a British head of government.
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A Communiqué from the Conservative Party also explains that the health services "have not had the attention they deserved lately" because of the "Brexit impasse". To remedy this, the party proposes to increase the NHS budget by 20.5 billion pounds (24 billion euros) by 2023-24. For their part, Labor promises 5.5-billion pounds (6.4 billion euros) more per year than the Conservatives.
Boris Johnson's party has the reputation of mistreating the NHS, "the Tories are doing everything they can to reassure voters and are trying to show that they have received the message that they now have to spend more on the health system. says Tim Bale, professor of political science at Queen Mary University in London.
These campaign promises of both parties reflect in any case the priorities of the British-: the polls show that, for voters, the NHS is a bigger issue than Brexit, which has dominated the political debate in the UK since three years. A study by Panelbase published in late October showed that health was the most cited concern when respondents were asked to list the main issues facing the country: the NHS was cited by % of respondents versus 54% for Brexit. The opinion poll firm Opinium published a study on November 1 with similar results: 59% of respondents ranked health as their main concern, more than the 52% who mentioned Brexit.
Can Labor Take It - ?
However, it is not certain that the Labor Party manages to take advantage of the NHS crisis in the next elections. "This is a question that has been part of Labor's fundamentals for a long time, but the Conservatives have had a flair for it, too," says Sir-John Curtice, a professor of political science at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. From the moment the Tories also propose to increase the NHS budget, "the debate is limited to - how much do you want more-?", Continues the professor.
On the other hand, Labor has a "larger problem with voters' perceptions of their competence, which plays on the British idea of how the health system will be run", adds Sir-John Curtice.
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This is certainly not the first time that health issues will play an important role in a vote in the UK. Everyone still remembers the 2016 Brexit campaign, which argued that the money recovered from the British contribution to the European Union budget would allow 350-million pounds to be invested (408.3 -Millions of euros) per week in the NHS.
This time it was Jeremy Corbyn who found a way to link NHS and Brexit- he accused Boris Johnson of wanting to "sell off" Britain's health care system to US President Donald Trump - which is unpopular in the UK - in a commercial agreement with the United States once the Brexit is realized.
The Conservatives may say tirelessly that the NHS will not be included in any future discussions on a trade deal with Washington, the opposition attack is working. "On this issue, the Conservatives are really walking on eggs, if a NHS winter crisis were added to Labor's argument, this could be decisive" for the outcome of the vote, says Michael Keating, professor of political science at the University of Edinburgh.