One Photo May Doom Tories
By
Finian Cunningham
December 11, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
- The heart-rending
photograph of a little boy forced to
sleep rough on a cold hospital floor
because of bed shortages in Britain may
cost Boris Johnson and his Tory party
dearly.
As Britain
heads to a general election this week,
the forlorn image of a
child suffering from pneumonia
having to endure appalling discomfort in
a major hospital seems to have
galvanized voters on the issues that
really matter – a national healthcare
service in crisis caused by a decade of
brutal economic austerity imposed by
Conservative governments.
When confronted by a journalist, the
British prime minister Boris Johnson
repeatedly refused to look at the
photograph of the boy (published earlier
by the The Mirror newspaper). Instead
Johnson rabbited on about how if his
party is re-elected his government would
throw lots of investment at the National
Health Service (NHS).
Few people will buy Johnson’s promises.
The Conservatives have been in power
since 2010 and during the past 10 years,
the crisis in the healthcare system has
exploded. It is under-funded by
austerity cuts, under-staffed and
over-worked, with patients dying from
growing waiting times for urgent
treatment.
One study
released this week by top doctors found
that
some 5,500 patients across Britain have
died
prematurely since 2016 because they
weren’t given adequate treatment due to
bed shortages in hospitals.
The case of four-year-old Jack
Williment – the wee boy who had to
sleep on a pile of coats on a
hospital floor – is just one of
thousands. Fortunately for Jack he
eventually received treatment to
relieve his pneumonia.
For the past three years, British
politics have been dominated by the
divisive issue of Brexit. Boris Johnson
is hoping that his vow to “get Brexit
done” will see his party being
re-elected with a substantial
parliamentary majority this week. He is
claiming that as soon as Britain leaves
the European Union then the nation will
be free to control its finances and
boost public services.
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But it wasn’t the EU that brought
British hospitals to their knees from
chronic lack of funding. It was
Johnson’s Conservative party that
singlehandedly slashed budgets for the
health service and other public
services. This was done in order to give
Britain’s wealthiest even more wealth
through tax cuts. Britain is reckoned to
have more billionaires per capita than
any other country. Just six of these
billionaires reportedly have as much
wealth as the combined assets of 13.5
million of Britain’s poorest (20 per
cent of the population).
Why would Britain being out of the EU
suddenly turn that around? It wouldn’t.
Because the real problem is one of
ideology and in particular the elitist
contempt among Johnson’s Conservatives
towards the working majority of Britons
and the concept of a properly funded
welfare state.
Brexit is certainly a divisive issue
with the British nation cut in half
over whether to leave or remain in
the European Union. But surely one
thing that can unite most people is
the reality of how broken British
society is under an ideology of
enriching the rich while driving
millions into deprivation and
poverty.
It
is an abomination that in today’s
Britain – a country reckoned to have the
fifth-largest economy in the world –
that children are forced to lie on
hospital floors waiting for life-saving
medical care. It is a disgrace when
hard-pressed doctors and nurses –
working under stressful conditions due
to lack of government funding – have to
prioritize which patients receive care
and which don’t. All of them should be
given immediate first-class medical
treatment.
The longer this election campaign has
gone on, the more the British public
have begun to see through the Tory
bluster and bluffs about “get Brexit
done”. Boris Johnson keeps repeating
this slogan as if his brain is
programmed like a robot.
In
recent days, the public mood and polls
seem to be shifting away from the
Tories. The pro-Tory news media have
likewise intensified their smears
against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn,
hysterically warning that his “Marxist
manifesto” will be ruin Britain.
Labour’s manifesto is not Marxist and
the only thing it will ruin is the
wealth and privileges of Britain’s
oligarchy whom the likes of
Eton-educated Boris Johnson pander to.
When Johnson refused to look at the
pitiful image of the little boy on the
hospital floor that was the moment the
British public saw the reality of what
is at stake in this election – a society
in crisis caused by heartless political
conmen.