The NHS crumbling in Dec/ Jan is a standard feature over the past decade.
The real issue is in training and retention, efficiency and clear pathways of care-particularly into social care. So much of it is run on a just-in-time basis with little spare capacity. The population grew and aged, and the capacity had not kept up with the change in demand.
When I went into labour, pretty much 11 years ago, DS decided to be born alongside the pre-Christmas induction/ ELCS rush. It took over 24 hours to dilate enough to be admitted and at that point, I was a very long way past paracetomal touching anything. Labour ward was full and the Labour waiting room was busy and I can remember kneeling over a chair trying to do hypnobirthing through it hearing someone on the phone and refering to me "being worse" than she was. When I did get a room at around midnight, the MWs were stretched across too many patients and we barely had one in the room for the next 5 hours. I ended up trying to push a back to back baby out for 2 hours, ended up with an EMCS and he was quickly rescucitated and whisked off to neonatal. No one told me baby was born, I kind of grasped that there was a baby around, people saying "he" and that he was being taken away and croaked at DH to go with him, then ended up in recovery alone as they were in neonatal. DH came back with photos and video of the baby I hadn't seen. I ended up in HDU and fortunately DS stabilised quickly and was brought to me after some hours (it must be so, so difficult for mothers who are separated for days, weeks, months) HDU was good care and support. The next night I was woken up in the early hours to be bundled off to main ward to free up the HDU MW and I was dumped on main ward and left to get on with caring for a baby despite having been unable to move unassisted for two days or infact move much in the previous month due to SPD. There was no point pressing the buzzer as with a staff ratio of 1:14 they just buzzed and buzzed and no one came. On day 4 post birth the ward calmed down to 1:8 and a MW came back on shift aghast that I was still there on a mission to discharge me and argued that my high BP wasn't going anywhere there and I was better recovering at home with extra community checks. That last day MWs who'd been very brusque and perfunctory on previous shifts had that bit more time to be human and care.
On DS's first two birthdays, I sobbed because so much of that confusion, fear, desperateness came back. Second time, I was pregnant and it did push me into getting support for DS2's birth. It had its complications and birth injuries, but because of better staffing, communication and care, it was mentally a much better birth.
There's been very little time in the past 30 years where waits for treatment (be it A&E or waiting lists) have come down to far more reasonable levels after Blair threw lots of money at it (the overtime money on an "initiative clinic" was amazing if you could get it! I only staffed one or two)
Talking to a friend with a strategic backroom role last winter, she was saying that winter seemed like a shock to the hospital each year and they couldn't see the annual pattern. One year they did put more planning into resourcing the winter and while busy, they didn't get those regular cusp of a crisis moments.