The NHS is in the middle of yet another round of strikes, the appointments are being cancelled by the tens of thousands, and the department that is supposed to be running the health service has no Secretary of State and no Prime Minister to answer to. At the precise moment the NHS needs leadership, Labour has left the bridge empty.
A Health Service Without a Captain
The Health Secretary resigned in May, one of a string of cabinet ministers who walked out as the government fell apart. The Prime Minister followed in June. So while doctors are on the picket lines and patients are waiting in pain, the people meant to be negotiating a way out of this mess are instead consumed by a leadership contest. You cannot settle a dispute when there is nobody in charge to settle it.
This is the practical consequence of political chaos. It is not a Westminster parlour game. When the government collapses, the machinery of state stops working, and nowhere is that more dangerous than in the NHS, where delay is measured in human suffering.
Strikes Without End
The resident doctors are back in dispute, with further walkouts hitting the service this month. Industrial action across 2025 and into 2026 has already cost the NHS something in the order of 170,000 cancelled appointments and procedures. Every one of those is a real person: an operation postponed, a scan delayed, a diagnosis pushed back. Behind every strike statistic is a patient who was told to wait.
Labour came to office promising to end the strikes and fix the NHS. Instead the disputes have rumbled on and on, with no durable settlement and no end in sight. Throwing money at the problem without reform has not bought peace. It has simply set the precedent that the next group will strike for more.
The Spin and the Reality
Ministers like to point to progress on the 18-week target and a falling waiting list. There has been some movement, yes. But the list still runs into the millions, the target is still being missed for far too many patients, and every fresh strike threatens to undo whatever ground has been gained. A waiting list that ticks down slightly between strikes is not a recovery. It is a holding pattern.
Meanwhile, more and more people who can scrape the money together are going private rather than wait, creating exactly the two-tier system Labour claims to oppose. Those who cannot pay are left in the queue. That is not the founding promise of the NHS, and it is happening on Labour's watch.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would get a grip on the NHS instead of letting it drift. We would cut the bloated layers of management and bureaucracy that swallow money meant for the front line, and put those resources into doctors, nurses, and the people who actually treat patients. We would tackle the staffing crisis by training and retaining British medical staff rather than relying on permanent emergency measures.
Above all, we would provide leadership, the one thing Labour cannot offer while it is busy choosing its third leader of this Parliament. The NHS needs a government that turns up to work. Right now it has a government that has walked out.