The Union Flag Does Not Shorten the Waiting List

This Facebook Reel is a perfect little capsule of modern political nonsense. A man, a Union Flag, a stern face, and a slogan that sounds radical until you realise it describes the system we already have. Veterans should get free medical and psychiatric care for life. They do. It is called the NHS.

That is not an opinion. It is a fact. Veterans are entitled to lifelong healthcare on exactly the same basis as everyone else, with additional pathways for service related physical and mental health conditions. The problem is not access in law. It is capacity in reality. Long waits, overstretched staff, patchy mental health provision. In other words, the same problems faced by everyone else.

So what is the Reel actually saying? Once you scrape off the sentiment, it is hinting at priority treatment. Jumping the queue. Being seen faster than other patients because of who you are rather than how ill you are. That is a very different claim, and one the sign never quite has the courage to state.

Because the moment you do, the questions become awkward. Priority over whom? The child with cancer? The nurse with burnout? The pensioner waiting for a heart operation? The NHS is based on clinical need precisely to avoid this kind of moral sorting.

And if priority really is the argument, then even that collapses unless it is limited to those who saw active frontline service and for conditions clearly linked to that service. Anything broader turns into a vague hierarchy of worth, where simply having worn a uniform at some point confers lifelong precedence. That is not healthcare policy. It is cosplay compassion.

The final irony is that the same political culture that shares these Reels with misty-eyed reverence spent fourteen years hollowing out the NHS, squeezing mental health services, and treating veterans as a photo opportunity rather than a funding line. You do not fix that with a Reel and a flag in the background.

Care is delivered by money, staff and systems. Not by placards that demand something we already provide while quietly sabotaging the means to deliver it.