In another illustration of the issues of Tory Britain, I have just tried to book a dental appointment.
Apparently the NHS service has been removed from my practice in the past few months and you now have to go private. Not good. Apparently all the NHS dentists left, and, when I asked the receptionist whether they would likely recruit others, her words were something very similar to "it seems that government policy is to wind down NHS dentistry". And the receptionist is not some kind of radical left-winger, but someone who always comes across very professional.
Nice. It just sums up what the Conservative Party are all about and why I don't trust Sunak one iota. A small-state, make-us-pay-more-than-we-did-before-for-vital-services approach has always been the base Conservative ideology, to my eyes, ever since the poll tax in 1989 which was the moment I became properly politically aware. Brexit of course just made things worse, with the result that the current Conservative Party basically represents the polar opposite to my own political views.
But oh no, the problem, according to the press, is never the Tories and their penny-pinching, small-state, wannabe-Republican politics. It's always someone else.