The health service is collapsing “in slow motion” because Stormont is distracted by orange-green arguments, according to Dr Alan Stout, chair of the British Medical Association in Northern Ireland.

Dr Stout is correct in the general sense that our dysfunctional political system must be a factor in our dysfunctional health service.

As he noted in his Irish News interview, health can seem like “an afterthought” compared to issues like Drumcree.

However, the politics of healthcare itself in Northern Ireland is remarkably devoid of orange-green arguments.

Irish-medium education must not become a casualty of the Drumcree dispute - The Irish News view

Tim Cairns: The divide in unionism runs right through the DUP

You have to go all the way back to 1999 to find a clear example: the closure of maternity services at Belfast City Hospital instead of at the Royal.

These hospitals are less than a mile apart, showing how little it can take to trigger an angry unionist versus nationalist dispute over a service relocation, so it is all the more striking there have been none since.

All five main parties at Stormont share the same overall health reform policy, under the Bengoa report. All five have turned up together to oppose reforms in their constituencies.

Although Alliance has become an exception, it joined other parties to criticise breast cancer centralisation in 2019.

Most of the hospitals facing loss of services are in nationalist-majority border areas, yet local politicians........

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