ever in Northern Ireland, pray that you never need a gallbladder removal, a neurology appointment or a hip replacement. For these treatments, patients routinely face waits of several years to be seen. Hospital waiting lists, on which the equivalent of a quarter of the population languish, are just the tip of the province’s health-care crisis.
On the other side of the Irish Sea the leaders of the main political parties may be tempted to dismiss these horrors as an outlier. Health care, after all, is a matter for devolved administrations. Before the return of the Northern Irish executive in February, the country had gone two years without a government. Northern Irish politics is still coloured primarily by constitutional questions, which means health care may have comparatively less salience.