My elderly mother’s treatment by NHS is a grim reminder of the real-world consequences of 17 years of poisonous politics – John McLellan

After Brexit led to the rise of Boris Johnson and reinvigorated the independence campaign, political rhetoric reached new heights in bitterness. Now there is a chance to drain the poison, but ‘fixing our NHS’ is easy to put on a political pledge card, harder to actually achieve

The NHS tops most lists of concerns along with the cost of living, and most people have their stories of good and bad in the system. I witnessed it at its best when having open-heart surgery for a dodgy valve, but that was eight years ago, and the hidden impact of lockdown is now being felt as waiting lists grow ever longer.

Thousands are voting with their walking sticks by going private for elective knee and hip replacements to beat queues stretching to over two years. But for most urgent issues, there is no alternative to the NHS and I was back in hospital at the weekend, not for treatment but to visit my 84-year-old mother who was admitted to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth a fortnight ago after her care visitor raised concerns about an infection.

At first, she was being treated with antibiotics then, apparently, she wasn’t. We were told she had a sodium deficiency, then it was potassium, then she was back to antibiotics. She couldn’t be released because of her mobility issues, but wasn’t in a rehab ward so she wouldn’t get necessary help. No one knew when she might be released, then she was to be transferred to Gartnavel for rehab.

Perhaps the SNP are hoping that Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting will come up with a way to fix the NHS (Picture: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images)

Then she was going to go straight home last Thursday. But the carers weren’t available for her to return home, so it was put back to Friday. Then she ran a temperature, and the release was postponed. All the while her confusion worsened and then on Saturday, she tested positive for Covid, so when we visited yesterday it was back to 2020 and full PPE.

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“Do you know what the situation is with my mum?” I asked a member of staff. “Oh, I’m just an auxiliary, you’ll need to ask the nurse.” Twenty minutes later I saw another nurse. “Can you tell me what’s happening with my mum?” “Oh, I’m just an auxiliary, you’ll need to ask the nurse.” Then someone in different-coloured scrubs appeared to check the ladies in the ward. “I presume you’re the nurse, can I just ask what’s happening with my mum?” I repeated. “Oh, you’ll need to speak to the consultant tomorrow.”

Meanwhile other ladies with similar issues struggled for attention, with buzzers going off but little sense of urgency. They all looked like they should be at home or with carers, and lo and behold, out of the blue, yesterday we got a call to say that, as mum was not displaying Covid symptoms, she could be discharged. But then carers couldn’t be found so she’s stuck. In that unit at least, it’s no wonder they call the Queen Elizabeth the Death Star.

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“Fixing our NHS” is easy to put on a political pledge card, and after 17 years in charge and a per capita health budget with dwarfs those in most parts of the UK, the recognition that change is needed is being felt here as much as it is in Westminster, and for all the latest First Minister, John Swinney, is right to put economic growth back as a priority, there’s very little sign that NHS Scotland is about to undergo any kind of transformation. Maybe it’s a game of wait-and-see what Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting might deliver for Labour, but with Sir Keir Starmer’s don’t-scare-the-horses strategy, that’s not clear either.

With independence off the agenda for now, the SNP has no choice but to address practical concerns in much the same way that, albeit briefly, Nicola Sturgeon had to accept, in the fleeting period between the independence referendum and the Brexit vote, that once-in-a-generation meant exactly that for all but diehards.

The nationalists’ 2015 general election landslide might have been a “buyer’s remorse” reaction to the 2014 defeat, but also a sense that the SNP would be a strong voice for Scotland when Labour was in a tailspin. Notionally at least, Ms Sturgeon’s attention switched to education.

But Brexit changed everything and didn’t just deliver the circumstances for Boris Johnson’s rise and reinvigorate the independence campaign because of the overwhelming Scottish vote to remain, but ramped up the rhetoric to bitter heights from which it has still not returned. Now there is a chance to drain the poison, and Ms Sturgeon’s attempt to gloss over her pivotal contribution to the vicious atmosphere of the past seven or eight years is actually helpful in illustrating the difference between the SNP’s perception of itself and the reality.

Similarly, contrast between Mr Swinney’s attempts at a more measured style than the snarling, baying, debating chamber bully he was for so long only shows how bad things had become. Embezzlement allegations at the top of the SNP, on top of many other personal failings and policy failures, have exposed the party’s claims of moral exceptionalism to be the nonsense they always were. So too should the expulsion of moderate Green party members and the excoriating verdict of an employment tribunal against the Edinburgh Rape Crisis signal the further marginalisation of extreme identity politics which alienates so many.

Brass tacks are the order of the day. It means not just declaring a housing emergency but doing something about it, and recognising political interference with commercial markets simply turns off the investment tap, without which there will be no solutions. It means acknowledging that trapping thousands of homeowners with unaffordable and impractical insulation and heating demands will, in the words of Fergus Ewing MSP, turn them into “mortgage prisoners”.

Being serious about boosting the economy requires an understanding that investors crave stability, which continuing to argue for constitutional upheaval undermines. It also demands an acceptance that high taxes, incompetent local administration and neglected infrastructure are bad for international attractiveness, as a leading European place-branding consultancy recently advised Scottish entrepreneurs Sandy and James Easdale.

But a better economy can’t be an excuse to throw more money at an unreformed NHS.