The Health Secretary has just resigned. The Prime Minister is fighting for his political life. And underneath the Westminster melodrama, the actual NHS continues to fail the people it exists to serve. The latest figures are brutal: 7.31 million people on the waiting list. Only 60.2% of patients seen within the supposed 18-week target. Strike action by resident doctors in 2025–26 has wiped out an estimated 171,776 appointments and procedures. This is what Labour calls "fixing the NHS".
The 18-Week Target Is a Joke
The 18-week referral-to-treatment target is supposed to be a guarantee. Labour campaigned on restoring it. Instead, four in ten patients are now waiting longer than that. A target met by only 60.2% of cases isn't a target — it's a fig leaf. Tell a constituent in Preston East waiting over a year for a hip replacement that the NHS is "on track". Tell a young mother queuing for an MRI that things are improving. Tell an elderly man whose cancer pathway has slipped twice that Labour's plan is working. It is not working. It has never worked. And it will not work, because Labour have no idea how to fix it.
Strikes Are Burning Care to the Ground
171,776 lost appointments. Let that figure sit for a moment. That is more than the population of Preston, twice over, deprived of treatment they were promised. A six-day resident doctor strike in April 2026 alone tore another hole through the schedule. The current strike mandate runs to August. More walkouts are possible. None of this is the doctors' fault alone — the dispute exists because Labour are incapable of resolving it. A government that cannot keep its own health service running cannot claim to govern.
The Money Isn't the Problem
Defenders of the status quo will, predictably, demand more money. But the NHS already consumes around 40% of day-to-day departmental spending. Real-terms spending per head is at historic highs. The problem is not how much we spend. The problem is what we get for it. Productivity in the NHS has collapsed. Bureaucracy has bloated. Layers of middle management have multiplied while the people who actually treat patients are exhausted and underpaid. Pumping more money into the same broken structure will get the same broken result.
Labour's "Plan" Is Slogans
Read Labour's actual NHS plan and what you find is a list of intentions, not actions. Promises to "reform". Promises to "transform". Promises that boil down to "trust us, we'll be different". Two years in, the only thing that has been transformed is the Health Secretary's job title — into a vacancy. Streeting, on his way out, made clear he had lost confidence in the entire direction of the government. A government that loses its own Health Secretary cannot fix anyone else's hospital.
What Reform UK Would Do
The NHS needs honest, structural reform — not another reorganisation, not another "ten-year plan", not another government taskforce. We would publish hospital-by-hospital productivity data so the public can see exactly where their money goes. We would aggressively cut administrative overhead and redirect that spending to clinical staff. We would expand the use of the independent and private sector to clear backlogs at NHS prices — because a patient treated is a patient treated, whatever the building's logo. We would train and retain more British doctors and nurses rather than relying on permanent recruitment from poorer countries. The NHS belongs to the British people. It is time we treated it like it.
7.31 million people waiting. 60.2% target attainment. Six-day strikes ripping appointments out of the diary. This is the legacy Labour will leave. Voters know what they have to do about it.