A sick joke

Hear the words "humanitarian crisis" and you're likely to think of Syria or a war-torn African republic - not the UK. But those were the words used by Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, on Friday to describe the current situation within the NHS.

Needless to say, the remarks have provoked a significant response. Inevitably, both Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt have publicly dismissed the description - but the facts, as laid out by the Guardian, bear painful testimony to its truthfulness.

The causes of the crisis are obvious: both the Tories' chronic underfunding of the NHS, calculated to accelerate privatisation, and the savage cuts imposed on social care by the austerity programme. And yet, of course, you just know that in some quarters immigrants will be getting the blame...