Labour’s claim that the Tories want to privatise the NHS is a lie. More’s the pity
How is Jeremy Corbyn able to get away with it? His constant refrain this past week has been that the Conservatives are committed to privatising the NHS, selling it off to the Americans through a trade deal. Labour often describes the Tories’ plans as privatisation “by stealth”, and the apparent stealthiness of the process is crucial to the party’s argument – because there is no obvious evidence that it is true.
More’s the pity, some might say. The Conservatives have become as dogmatic as any other party about the health service sticking to its current structure and model of provision. They have pledged to pump in ever more billions of pounds, regardless of whether the money is destined to be put to good use or merely lost down the familiar black hole.
Those of us who find the NHS unaccountable, distant, rigid, wasteful and more interested in the needs of its workers than its patients can only hope that eventually sanity will prevail and that it will be reformed such that everyone will still be able to access healthcare should they need it, just not necessarily through a socialist system dreamt up by statist central planners more than half a century ago.
For the moment, however, we will have to contend with the mistruths and falsehoods peddled by the Labour leader and his party. The various fact-checking websites and BBC pundits who are so keen to probe statements by Right-wing politicians have been relatively quiet on this matter. Donald Trump said again last week that the United States was not interested in the NHS as part of negotiations for a free-trade agreement with the UK, but the broadcasters were fixated instead on the president’s (incorrect) assertion that Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal would preclude that same free-trade deal from being negotiated.
The contrast with their treatment of the infamous £350million a week referendum claim could not be balder. That number was obviously contentious – being an approximate gross figure for our EU contributions around the time of the referendum, rather than the net figure after taking into account the rebate and what the EU spends on our behalf here.
No doubt we will continue to debate the accuracy of the precise language used back in 2016 to describe what we could do with this money after Brexit. But was it a straight-up lie? In essence, no. The truth is that we do pay Brussels billions every year, money that a lot of British people would like to have back.
By contrast, Corbyn is, in essence, lying about the NHS. So why aren’t his claims being scrutinised in the same way? Partly, no doubt, because the delusion persists that he has no chance of winning this election. But his conspiracy theories are also widely believed, especially among the gullible, public-sector Left-liberals who now make up the core Labour Party vote. And that is perhaps the answer to it. These are the same people, after all, who dominate the media and the commentariat and they are determined to see the worst in both Boris and the Conservatives.
Corbyn is, in essence, lying about the NHS. So why aren’t his claims being scrutinised in the same way that the Leave campaign’s were?