It’s the summer holidays, you know – and when it gets hot, we need to get angry1. And so everyone’s on about the NHS today – a subject bound to boil the blood, for one reason or another.

I mean everyone, too. Everyone who isn’t busy in their Government-approved dance classes (the government are probably, to be fair, pushing dance classes so that we’ll stay healthy and not be a burden to the NHS, so it’s all connected in the great circle of strife). It’s getting to the point where I can’t help but wonder when everyone will shut up and leave the Americans to sort out their own business.

I hope it’s soon.

The most depressing thing to my mind, though, isn’t the banality of saying ‘#welovethenhs’ and imagining that this in some way constitutes an argument which is sensible, constructive or useful to the Americans while they debate much-needed changes to their own healthcare system (apparently it’s the only way we internet users know to express ourselves, you know).

Nor is the most depressing thing the sight of half a million hypocrites moving from utter disdain of ‘flag-waving patriotism’ to unthinking and unreserved defence of a Great British Institution against Johnny Foreigner and his darned disagreement. As if a million Unite Against Fascism protesters cried out in terror, and then were suddenly silenced2.

No, the thing which irritates the pants off me, or at least the socks, is the relentless party-political point scoring which inevitably accompanies any event such as this. The constant back-and-forth of What Labour Said and What David Cameron Didn’t Do.

Has it really never occurred to anyone that perhaps you can enjoy the security of assured healthcare free at point of use without making constant overt statements in support of it? Has it never occurred that we might offer constructive criticism to an institution we like, but would like more if it were more efficient and more fair? Has it never occurred that perhaps silence might imply nothing at all?

Gargh!

So, yeah. Apparently David Cameron hates the NHS because Daniel Hannan went on American television and said nasty things about it. This follows quite logically, because Daniel Hannan is an anagram of David Cameron, which means they always think the same things at the same time as each other. Or something.

Of course, unless David Cameron now throws Hannan out of the Conservative Party for speaking his mind (Oh, and a very irate John Redwood while he’s at it, and Graeme Archer for not lending his full backing to the pointless twitter campaign, and indeed probably Boris Johnson and David Davis, you know – for good measure) then he must hate the NHS. It tells us all we need to know.

Never mind the million dull bloody speeches he’s done on healthcare, nor the (whisper it) rather personal experience that David Cameron has had with the NHS which just might affect his own opinions on the matter. Never mind that the Tories – the ones in the leadership, I mean, the ones whose opinion actually counts – are committed to some ridiculous level of healthcare spending and are not even willing to countenance the idea that there may be ways of cutting NHS costs without the bodies of the sick piling up along the avenues of Britain.

No, none of that matters because we’ve got a once-in-a-lunchtime chance to reduce politics down to it’s simplest and most childish, paint our enemies in crayon, and pretend that politics is actually very important and the business of making people’s lives better, instead of little more than getting together in gangs and squabbling over who’s got the biggest mates.

Yeah, right.

  1. A curiosity: when Harriet Harman was running the country, it rained, and the Labour Party spent the whole time on the defensive. Now Madelson is running the country, the sun is shining and the Tories are under pressure. [↩]
  2. Oh, if only [↩]