This makes me wonder… if Conservative strategy is to run it into the ground and then privatise, which is an unpopular plan with the public, then how are they able to consistently win elections?
Largely because the Tories are also willing to be fairly openly xenophobic, which is very popular with a large portion of the public. "Making sure the poors don't take more than they deserve" is another one of their popular policies.
The more-well-off also think Tory policies will get them a house and security. In practice, the UK housing market is completely fucked and gets more so every year, but... it doesn't stop people believing it.
Basically the health of the NHS is about the tenth thing on some people's minds when voting, until they get cancer or break an arm, at which point they start complaining about it.
It is more nuanced than that. The issue is that a lot of western societies are falling into debt traps because of a lot of social and economic factors which are already straining these systems to the point that they cant keep up, and the conservative strategy (in my good faith interpretation) regarding this is reducing the cost of programs that they consider to be bloated. This can be interpreted as running it into the ground as the bloat is often in bureaucracy which can easily pass the buck to actual service providers which then suffer from lack of funding. In contrast a more liberal solution would likely involve increasing spending then trying to recover that through additional taxes, which conservatives would say doesn't solve the cost problem but rather exacerbates it since bloat remains and is paid for by more debt or taxes. Of course this is just a general simplification of the conflict.
Clearly the solution is probably somewhere in between, but political polarization has simply pushed people to their party lines and entrenched their positions such that no real progress can happen while things continue to fall apart.
The more-well-off also think Tory policies will get them a house and security. In practice, the UK housing market is completely fucked and gets more so every year, but... it doesn't stop people believing it.
Basically the health of the NHS is about the tenth thing on some people's minds when voting, until they get cancer or break an arm, at which point they start complaining about it.