New year, old issue: how do you solve a problem like those facing the National Health Service? That is the question which the Prime Minister chose for his first set-piece speech of 2025.

It’s risky territory to march into, given the sensitivities, but he is doing so because the scale, reach and popularity of the NHS is so great that failure to shepherd it successfully would threaten his entire Government.

In Monday’s speech, he described success on this front to be the “cornerstone” of his mission to “rebuild the country”. There’s no doubt that the stakes are extremely high.

It was striking that the Labour Party itself went so far as to describe the NHS as “broken” in 2024, on the campaign trail and after the general election.

To an extent, that was about setting expectations. Just as we were told that the economy had “crashed”, and that there was a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances, campaign mode saw them rolling the pitch to attribute blame for bad news to their predecessors, and to lower the bar by which the public might judge their own performance.

But it was also about laying

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