On the occasion of its 73rd birthday, the Queen has given the National Health Service a present. The NHS has become the third collective body, after Malta and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, to receive the award of the George Cross. Established by King George VI in 1940, the George Cross is a recognition for civilian gallantry in the face of conspicuous danger. The pandemic has been a war, of sorts. We talk of health workers on the front line and the virus as an invisible enemy. The staff of the NHS have, indeed, been heroic in the fight – there we go again – against Covid-19.
I don’t especially want to rain on this parade but it would surely have been better to grant the award officially to the past and present staff of the NHS rather than to the institution itself. It is a strange quirk of British life that we tend to attribute remedial healthcare to the system instead of the particular professionals who provide it. We make a fetish of the NHS, or to use Nigel Lawson’s much-quoted remark, we make a religion of it.
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