On waiting for services: I was actually (and still technically am) on an NHS waitlist which I've been on for the last 5 years, my new employer is just paying a private doctor to handle everything which begins next week. Just wanted to put that out there to give an idea to the non-UK HN audience of how bad things have got.
The only other state that comes to mind where typical service delivery times were measured in years was the DDR in the late 80s, and we all know how that ended.
One other thing few talk about is the recent noticeable drop in the ability of the state to enforce it's laws (especially when those laws are seen to be morally wrong), for example there's been multiple documented instances now of immigration raids being stopped by hundreds of people surrounding the vans until the police leave (https://news.sky.com/story/peckham-man-arrested-for-immigrat...) and jury nullification is starting to become a noticeable thing even for those who are arrested (a prominent example being the Colston Four: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colston_Four) - the fact the state can't even consistently enforce its laws anymore speaks to its rapidly diminishing power, even domestically.
Maybe I'm just mad and have read too much into everything, but it feels like the British state is a few mistakes away from putting itself into a slow and irreversible collapse. Maybe it will take a few years so that a noticeable disparity forms between the UK and it's neighbours like Ireland and etc, but it feels it's slowly marching that way.