Trust is at the heart of this General Election campaign

No side has been able to wholly convince the electorate of their main campaign claims, writes Brian Monteith

With only four campaign days for the parties to influence the minds of voters the Prime Minister still enjoys a comfortable lead of ten points that should assure him of a working majority.

Yet nothing is certain. Boris Johnson could still miss the goal spectacularly like Diana Ross famously missed that penalty at the ‘94 World Cup opening ceremony. He undoubtedly has flair and talent, but can he be trusted to deliver? That has been the central issue that has limited his undoubted appeal and held him back from achieving an unassailable lead.

At the outset of the campaign I argued that the election was Boris Johnson’s to lose. The danger facing him was that having benefitted from the public’s growing sense of grievance about Parliament obstructing the deliverance of Brexit he might be drawn into fighting on the ground of his opponents choosing where he could be more easily beaten.

He might lose points on the NHS, he might be outflanked on social care or ridiculed for increasing police numbers that his party originally cut. Whatever the issue, Johnson had to remind the public that the general election had been called earlier than should be expected, and that if they truly wanted to end their boredom and exhaustion with Brexit they must make a choice between giving him a majority – or sending him packing.

In the end, from my own admittedly subjective viewpoint, Johnson has managed to hold on to a diminished lead because his main opponents have been unable to land any significant blows. Indeed the very question of being able to trust Johnson that has been levelled at him by other leaders such as Corbyn, Sturgeon

and Swinson has only raised the questions of trust in them.

Labour’s revered Aunt Sally – the threat posed to the NHS by the dreaded Tories – becomes less convincing each time she is wheeled out in her bathchair. Thanks to the changing demographics a lot more demand is putting a strain on resources and with changing technology the costs rise further. NHS costs keep going up and this will not change whichever party governs the nation. Labour can argue you can’t trust the Tories on the NHS all it wants but it rings hollow when we know they say this every election and that every time they are in office they increase spending on the NHS – even during the period of austerity when other departments had their budgets cut.

Nor do the attacks from Labour and the SNP about the threat of privatisation of NHS services have credibility. Their idea was to use President Trump as a bogey man but my MEP colleague Henrik Overgaard-nielsen, a practising dentist and former head of the General Dental Practice Committee, utterly demolished this thesis last week by categorising how it has been the European Union forcing the growth of private provision of services in the NHS. Likewise it is the EU that was pushing a trade deal with President Obama that could have opened up the NHS further. In all of these points it is those such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson who by fighting to deliver Brexit are the real defenders of the NHS remaining accountable to the British electorate.

In Scotland, the claims of Nicola Sturgeon are especially weak. The scandals of the tragic and avoidable deaths of children in Glasgow’s new infirmary due to contaminated water, and the unopened Royal Hos