Express & Star comment: Still time for PM to sort out policies
The failure of hospital accident and emergency departments across the Black Country and Staffordshire to achieve waiting targets is a scandal.
In a time when the tax burden is at a record level, taxpayers – also known as the paying public – have a right to expect better from the National Health Service.
This is not about the principles of the NHS, but about the management of the institution and delivery of life or death services.
The closures of A&E departments overnight in the West Midlands – as at Stafford and now at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital – have entirely predictable consequences for neighbouring hospitals in the Black Country, particularly those at Walsall and Wolverhampton.
The priorities of the Government should be the health service and law and order, but it is failing disastrously on both counts.
If there was a General Election tomorrow many Conservative voters would find it extremely difficult to endorse another five years of a Theresa May-led administration.
On a personal level, Mrs May has may likeable qualities, as her recent Dancing Queen turn at the party conference in Birmingham clearly illustrated.
She is a very nice woman but there is no getting away from the fact that she was ineffective overall as Home Secretary and she has been a huge disappointment to many people since she took over in No 10.
There is still time for Mrs May to turn it around on Brexit, the NHS and law and order, but she needs to quickly discover some steely determination and clear policies for the country to have any great belief in her.
Her responsibilities are a problem far greater than any faced by a Conservative Prime Minister in living memory.
That’s because of the spectre of an anti-semitic, anti-business and anti-freedom Corbynite administration waiting in the wings for the keys to Downing Street.
While many people are so exasperated with the state of British politics they are clearly disengaged from the process, the scandal of long waits in A&E department illustrates the link between failures at senior and regional level and the life-and-death situation in the real world.
