In late July, heavily pregnant women across North Devon began messaging one another in a panic. The news was unthinkable: their local hospital maternity unit was shutting down almost immediately. Some expectant mums only discovered that their birth plans had been trashed over social media. The NHS had suddenly created the country’s biggest maternity desert. A woman in labour could be forced to drive at least an hour and a half to the nearest unit. It was as if bureaucracy had quietly withdrawn their right to civilisation.

While administrators at the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust claimed maternity teams would be contacting mothers-to-be directly, the reality was chaotic. Some high-risk expectant women reported they had received no call, letter or communication from the trust.

It seems that the modern British state doesn’t announce its collapse with a bang. Not even an emergency alert on your phone. Instead, it leaks out, leaving citizens to piece the disaster together online.

A second-rate civilisation is playing out in Devon

A second-rate civilisation is playing out in Devon

Maternity services at North Devon district hospital were suspended just two weeks later, on 11 August. Remarkably, there was almost no public protest. A service that sits at the very base of what a functioning country owes its citizens simply vanished. The hospital had handled around 1,200 births a year, roughly three babies a day. Its closure stripped a population of 165,000 of maternity care.

For the mothers-to-be it was a nightmare, of course. For a wizened old male hack who had his kids decades ago, the news life-cycle of this disaster fired........

© The Spectator