JEREMY CORBYN will warn against Labour’s plans to “hollow out our NHS by continuing Tory underfunding and privatisation” at an emergency rally today.
The former Labour leader will join healthcare workers and campaigners outside Archway Tube station in his Islington North constituency, warning that “more austerity and privatisation is not the answer” to the NHS crisis.
His intervention comes two days after the launch of the Labour manifesto, which failed to rule out cuts to the health service and dropped the party’s previous promise that the “NHS is not for sale.”
Mr Corbyn is standing as an independent against Labour candidate Praful Nargund after being blocked from representing the party, which has now expelled him.
At the rally, the lifelong socialist is expected to say: “Unlike Labour and the Tories, I do not believe the expansion of the private sector is the answer to the NHS crisis.
“I’m proud to have spent my life campaigning with my community for universal public healthcare. With your support, that is what I’ll continue to do.
“In Islington North, we have a message to anybody looking to promote private healthcare: keep your hands off our NHS.”
'Privatisation of healthcare is very, very important and it’s about what the private sector can do to prove its worth to the public sector' pic.twitter.com/hHtSPxBH7I
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer at the Mornflake Stadium, home to Crewe Alexandra while on the General Election campaign trail, June 13, 2024
From muzzling Palestinian rights to embracing austerity and outsourcing the NHS, Labour’s ‘tough choices’ always seem to hurt normal people while sparing wealthy donors — that’s why I am running to unseat Keir Starmer on July 4
…[T]he Labour Party launched its election manifesto — a dispiriting Thatcherite promise to continue endless austerity, soaring inequality and forever wars.
I announced my bid to become the independent MP for Holborn and St Pancras three weeks ago. Then, I was convinced that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party would offer little to improve the lives of this constituency’s amazing and diverse communities, or meaningfully restrain Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Having read this manifesto, I am more convinced than ever.
Starmer’s election campaign has traded on a series of stock phrases, all of which are profoundly misleading. Starmer promises to bring about “change,” but repeats tired economic shibboleths of the George Osborne variety.
He also claims to have remade the party “in the service of the working people.” In fact, the party is financially reliant on donations from big business and billionaires and its MPs rake in donations from the private-sector companies who circle the NHS.
The party’s long-feted New Deal for Working People is so disappointing that the party’s largest affiliated union, Unite, has refused to endorse the Labour Party manifesto.
But the most galling of all of the current Starmerisms is his invocation of “tough choices.” Starmer deploys the line to explain why the country cannot afford to pull half a million children out of poverty by ending the two-child benefit cap: a decision now confirmed by the manifesto.
Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, Starmer sadly explains, has made it impossible for the sixth-richest country in human history to lift children out of poverty at a cost little under £2 billion a year, a relatively measly sum in a country with a GDP of £2,274 trillion.
As the Labour Party manifesto makes clear, there have been plenty of hard choices made by the party — but all of them to the detriment of the poor and to the benefit of the mega-rich and big business.
Starmer makes the “tough choice” not to substantially increase funding the NHS, to end child poverty or reverse the swingeing cuts of the last decade; but only because he fails to make the “tough choice” to tax billionaires marginally more, even though the 10 richest people in the country are now richer than they have ever been.
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I’m especially angry that the Labour Party, like the Tories, has promised to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP: a real-term £7bn a year increase by 2029. This is almost double the entire £4.7bn a year the party intends to spend on its Green Prosperity Plan to tackle the imminent existential threat of climate change.
What sort of security does this really buy? The party’s offer on Palestine is, frankly, an outrage; the manifesto speaking out of both sides of its mouth. So while it recognises that “Palestinian statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people,” it then makes Palestinian statehood contingent on a meaningless word salad.
“We are committed to recognising a Palestinian state as a contribution to a renewed peace process which results in a two-state solution with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and sovereign state.”
So much for an inalienable right, which requires Israel to feel “safe” before Palestinians get statehood — just as Israeli leaders claim that Israel will only feel safe when Gaza is cleansed of its citizens because there are “no uninvolved.”
This offer significantly dilutes the party’s previous commitment to recognising Palestinian statehood on the first day of government — something first brought in by Ed Miliband, appearing in the 2017 and 2019 manifestos. If there was any hope that Labour would be any better than the Tories on Gaza once in power, this should dispel it once and for all.
Both the Lib Dems and the Green Party, by comparison, have committed to immediately recognising Palestine. The Labour Party now joins the ignominious company of the Tories and Reform in refusing to do so.
This manifesto is our manifesto – it belongs to every single person who has written to me over the last 41 years, met me at a community event or simply stopped me in the street. Meeting people, talking to people and working together to bring about a fairer society – that is what being an MP is all about.
The issues facing people in Islington are part of a much wider set of crises. There are more people living in desperate poverty than I have ever known. More rough sleepers struggling to survive. More refugees fleeing the horrors of war and climate catastrophe. We will not solve these crises unless we build a new kind of politics. Our people-powered campaign will demand a redistribution of wealth, ownership and power. For rent controls. For an end to the two-child benefits cap. For a Green New Deal. For safe routes for asylum seekers. For a fully funded, fully public NHS.
This future is no pipedream – our community is proof that a kinder world is possible. I visit community centres which are welcoming, creative places, where people can meet each other, learn, eat together, receive support when they need it, and give it when they are able to. I meet carers doing all they can to support relatives or friends, often in the most difficult circumstances. I meet members of mutual aid groups who are building a new economy, one act of solidarity at a time. If we applied these basic principles across the board, we would create a society that cares for each other and cares for all.
When I vote in Parliament, I do not vote alone. I vote with my community – and this campaign is bringing together people of all ages, faiths and backgrounds in pursuit of a better world. We are offering people something very precious: hope.
Join us at www.votecorbyn.com to prove that when we come together to fight for a better society for everyone, we can win.
CONTENTS
ACTION ON THE COST OF LIVING End the energy and water rip-off Fair pay for Islington workers Abolish the two-child benefit cap Universal basic income Wealth tax
HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT Security for renters Build social housing Housing insulation Leasehold reform Cladding justice
DEFEND OUR NHS End privatisation Support our doctors and nurses Mental health A National Care Service Reproductive health
A GREENER ISLINGTON A Green New Deal Protect our parks Save our buses Walking and cycling Animal welfare
EDUCATION FOR ALL Save our schools Education is not a commodity Lifelong learning Update our curriculum
A SAFER ISLINGTON A public health approach Tackling hate crime and extremism A fairer criminal justice system
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL Peace Reparations Refugees are welcome here Migrant justice
OUR DEMOCRACY The right to protest The right to strike Decentralisation Local public ownership Media and sport
The Green Party has unveiled its election manifesto, sold as a plan to “mend broken Britain”.
Addressing the Greens’ launch event in Brighton and Hove, co-leader Carla Denyer said the manifesto contained measures to “offer real hope and real change”.
“Our manifesto is based on investing to mend broken Britain and offer real hope and real change”, she said, adding: “We can’t go on with an economy where most people are working harder and yet getting poorer while inequality keeps growing.”
The Greens’ policies include introducing a new wealth tax of 1 per cent annually on assets above £10 million and 2 per cent on those above £2 billion, banning domestic flights for journeys which would take less than three hours by train, and moving to a four-day working week.
The party would also bring water companies, railways, and big five retail energy companies into public ownership; end immigration detention for all migrants unless they pose a danger to public safety; invest £50 billion in health and social care “to defend and restore the NHS”; scrap university tuition fees and increase the schools budget; and stop all new fossil fuel projects and cancel those recently licensed, like Rosebank in Scotland.
Green Party previews manifesto with extra spending on health and social care rising to over £50bn per year by 2030
This sits alongside an additional £20bn capital investment to bring crumbling hospitals, primary care buildings and outdated equipment up to modern standards
Greens will increase NHS frontline workers’ salaries including doctors, dentists and nurses
“Cast-iron Green guarantee” promise that Green MPs will fight privatisation of the NHS
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay and the party’s Health and Social Care Spokesperson, Dr Pallavi Devulapalli, today announced a “game-changing” package for the NHS and social care totally £50 billion a year in investment by 2030 and an additional £20 billion in capital investment to improve crumbling buildings.
Ramsay said “Today’s announcement represents a game changing package that is more than any other political party is offering. It has been fully costed and could be fully delivered.”
Mr Ramsay, who described his personal experience in recent months supporting a family member both through hospitals and then into the care system, said that “many people” could see that the NHS was “stretched to breaking point” despite the “commitment of hard-working NHS staff”.
The Greens used the announcement to reveal a package of spending pledges alongside a “Green cast iron guarantee” that Green MPs would fight the privatisation of the NHS at every stage. The announcement included a commitment to :
Invest £20bn in a capital investment to bring our crumbling hospitals and old equipment up to standard.
Invest £50 billion per year by 2030 into health and social care – more than any other major party – and would use the money to:
Dramatically reduce waiting lists
Offer everyone access to an NHS dentist
Guarantee rapid access to a GP when there is urgent need and dramatically reduce waiting times for all
Ensure people needing mental health support can access relevant therapies within 28 days
Invest £5bn per year to boost NHS salaries and keep our wonderful nurses and doctors in the UK
Invest £20 billion per year into adult social care to ensure dignity for those in need of care and take pressure off the NHS – including introducing free personal care.
Restore public health budgets with £1.5bn uplift in spending .
The large spending commitments they say is part of a fully costed manifesto due to be released on the 12th June in Brighton that includes commitments to “tax wealth fairly” by introducing a wealth tax of 1% on assets over £10 million and 2% over £1 billion.
