If you didn't care for a criticism of your policies on the people's health, you would call it "shroud-waving". Sometimes trolleys, or hospital food, or even blankets would do for a shroud.

The point about the NHS is no politician can ever win. Enough is never enough. Your achievements count for nothing if a single patient suffers in the aftermath of whatever it was the last daft reorganisation was supposed to achieve. Alex Salmond knows this. He can talk until someone is blue in the face over "satisfaction" ratings. He can tell you any mistake he might make pales into irrelevance beside the advancing devastation in England.