THE way they talk about it, anyone would think the problems engulfing the UK’s A&E departments are completely unsolvable.

Or, alternatively, only solvable by ONE political party.

The fact is that if politicians were not so venal, hypocritical and suffering with collective amnesia, we could solve all the NHS’s problems tomorrow.

Firstly, this government could make it legally enforceable for local councils to provide care beds for elderly people and FUND them. Then they could impose a new GP contract informing doctors they are obliged to work from 7am to 8pm in shifts and to give full cover overnight and at the weekend.

I can’t see why GPs would mind this, as they received an enormous pay rise in 2004 for effectively doing less work, and government data has revealed that nearly a million people went to A&E last year because they could not get a doctor’s appointment.

Then the government could reverse Britain’s absurd 24-hour drinking laws and set up tents in city centres to deal with the drunks there, letting them sleep it off and fining them £100 on the spot for their trouble.

Finally, they could stop treating A&E as the poor bloody infantry – there to clean up after all the other departments have gone home for tea.

For the first three days this week all we heard was a barrage of bickering over who loves the NHS most and who can look after it best.

Labour may have created the NHS in 1948. But it was Labour who introduced the 2004 GP contract and Labour who allowed 24/7 boozing and with it the culture of entitlement to help and assistance for the terminally trollied.

It was Labour, too, who opened the front door and waved in every single EU resident who fancied coming and living here – leaving us to feed, educate and treat in A&E a possible two million more people.

It’s the Conservatives who refuse to operate their beloved free-market policies when it comes to beefing up the wages and conditions of A&E staff, to reflect their wonky work hours and massive stress, and it’s the Conservatives and their useless Liberal Democrat partners who are guilty of refusing to fund the proper numbers of local authority care beds.

So I don’t want to hear another word from any of them about how THEY know best when the past 20 years have proved anything but.

I don’t know who is going to win this forthcoming election but I DO know that whoever triumphs won’t do anything to help one anxious A&E consultant who doesn’t know where the next bed is coming from, and neither will it assist one tearful nurse left in charge of 20 drunks who should have known better.

I also know – as we all do – that while the people who run this country are a sub-standard shower, the people who staff our A&Es are heroic.