Is it time to give up on the NHS, our national religion?

Sajid Javid makes an unlikely Martin Luther, nailing his theses to the door of a London think tank, calling for a Reformation in the national religion.

- JOHN RENTOUL

He was health secretary for only 12 months in the vaccination phase of the coronavirus crisis, but it was long enough for him to think deeply about whether the NHS model was the right one.

As a heretic, he knows that there will be some resistance from the faithful to the message that we can learn something from the way they do things on the continent - which is why he starts his foreword to the Policy Exchange report calling for the abolition of the NHS by claiming that this is the way to restore the health service to its founding principles.

Just as Luther argued that Christianity was basically the right idea, Javid says that “while the strength of our belief in these ideals has not wavered, our ability to deliver them is increasingly being called into question”.

And, just like Luther, Javid says that he and Policy Exchange are simply proposing questions to be debated. But when Javid says the choice is between “putting more and more money into healthcare, funded by yearly tax rises and by diverting essential investment into everything from education to defence towards the NHS” and “reforming how we do healthcare”, it is clear what his preference is.

The timing of Javid’s defiance is interesting. With hospital doctors losing the support of the public, Wes Streeting, Javid’s successor, warned on Monday that strikes would be “a gift to Nigel Farage”.