Eight million.

Write it out in full. Eight million people sitting on an NHS waiting list. One in every eight people in the country, queuing for hospital treatment they were told was their right as a citizen.

Cancer patients are being seen past the point where early treatment makes a difference. Hip replacements that used to take weeks now take a year and a half. Mental health referrals get sent back with a note saying the service is full, try your GP. Your GP can't see you either. That's a different article.

The government chucked £22 billion at the problem. The money's gone. Inflation ate a chunk. Agency staffing costs ate more, because the NHS can't keep anyone on permanently. The rest got absorbed into a system that hoovers up cash like a broken boiler hoovers up gas.

We spend less per head on healthcare than France, Germany, and the Netherlands. We get less too. But bring that up and you get accused of wanting to privatise the thing, which tends to shut the conversation down.

Junior doctors are still walking out periodically. Consultants describe the whole setup as being held together with "goodwill and gaffer tape." Neither of those things is in abundant supply right now.

Something's going to break. Probably already has. The question is whether any politician is honest enough to say what most people already suspect: the model doesn't work anymore. Not like this. Not at this scale.

They won't, of course. The NHS is sacred. You can't reform sacred things. You can only watch them fall apart.