Why the SNP should be terrified by NHS's latest 'normalised horror story'

Responding to yet more dire figures about NHS – this time revealing that nearly 52,000 patients waited more than the four-hour target time in A&E in the month of September alone – a remark by Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman Adam Harley that “huge waits at A&E have become a normalised horror story in our NHS” was a particularly telling one.

News that once would have genuinely shocked people has become so regular that it is submerging into the background noise of ordinary life. However, unless we wake from our complacent slumber, each and every one of us could find that we become ‘just another statistic’.

Remember that, for some patients, a delay in treatment is a life-and-death issue. According to an analysis of Public Health Scotland data by the Liberal Democrats earlier this year, more than 870 patients died during lengthy waits at A&E in 2025.

And, making her latest urgent plea for help to the SNP government, Dr Fiona Hunter, vice president of RCEM Scotland, underlined the seriousness of the problem in the starkest terms, saying: “Lives are at stake, and without immediate intervention, emergency departments are at risk of collapse.”

READ MORE: Constance calls for NHS medics to 'step up' this winter as A&E clinicians 'under the cosh'

A political cataclysm looms

Health Secretary Angela Constance said performance “remains below the level we want to see – and this cannot continue”, insisting the government was “taking action”. We certainly hope so.

She sounds genuine about her desire to improve things. But when she urged the public to “play their part” by going to A&E “only when necessary”, it almost felt like a tacit admission that the problems have become too big to solve.

READ MORE: Are SNP's plans to cut NHS health boards turning into second National Care Service fiasco?

The SNP should have grasped the seriousness of the NHS’s plight years ago and taken bold, radical steps to address it. Instead, they watched as its decline continued – and now emergency departments are “at risk of collapse”.

If anything like that happens, it could create the kind of political cataclysm that would wake a slumbering nation, sweep away the SNP’s usual ‘blame Westminster’ rhetoric and, quite possibly, bring down the government.