Demoralised. Discouraged. Fed up: the public sentiment that emerges from the latest survey into satisfaction with the NHS should put the frighteners on ministers both sides of the Berwick-Carlisle line.

It’s that sinking feeling you get when you’re trying to get through to the GP, already knowing what’s to come: “Sorry, we don’t have any appointments left for today.”

It’s that anxiety about a loved one who’s in need of help and has no idea when they’ll get to see a specialist.

It’s that sense that doctors and nurses are too busy and you shouldn’t be bothering them unless you’re on the verge of collapse.

The word crisis has sometimes been misused in the past, but now it’s justified. It’s a grinding, attritive crisis. The latest British Social Attitudes Survey, the gold standard test of public opinion on the health service, shows that satisfaction with the NHS in Scotland, England and Wales is at its lowest level since the survey began in 1983. Just 24 per cent of people say they are satisfied, a massive 29-point drop in three years, with waiting times and staff shortages the top concerns.

The NHS in Scotland is run differently to the service in England and in Wales, but here too, people are scunnered.

Politicians, inevitably, blame the pandemic whenever the state of the NHS comes up. It would be absurd to ignore Covid’s effects, but the decline set in well before 2020. The Conservatives serially underfunded the NHS in the 2010s, as demand from an ageing population ramped up.

Scots still die younger than most Europeans (Image: free)

It’s striking that the last time........

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