Media and Labour’s opponents desperate to make Peterborough by-election all about Brexit. If voters see past it to real, everyday issues there is only one choice at ballot box on Thursday
Comment
With other parties and their media friends working overtime to turn this Thursday’s Peterborough by-election into a mini Brexit referendum and New Labour relics focusing on smears, it couldn’t be clearer that Labour’s opponents are desperate to fight the election on anything but the real-life, everyday issues the people of Peterborough face.
Soaring violent crime and foodbank use, plummeting real-terms wages and living standards and the stripping of services are just some of the realities Peterborough voters are being forced to cope with by Conservative policies that have left the city behind.
The area has also seen some of the more infamous effects of Tory predations on the NHS. Only nineteen miles away, Hinchingbrooke hospital was put into special measures after a private company withdrew from its contract to operate the hospital.
But those effects have also been felt closer to home. Peterborough City Hospital merged with Hinchingbrooke into a single NHS Trust – but has suffered ‘severe‘ bed shortages and was itself also placed into special measures and is still under special direction by NHS England after only managing to improve its Care Quality Commission rating from ‘inadequate’ to ‘requires improvement’.
With hospitals around the country being closed and many others struggling like Peterborough and Hinchingbrooke under the weight of Tory spending restraints and privatisations, strong GP services become even more crucial.
But GP services are falling apart, according to the British Medical Association – which has warned that most GP practices are on the very ‘edge of viability’, again because of serious under-resourcing by the Tory government.
But this is not accidental. NHS GP Dr Ameen Kamlana spoke to Channel 5 about the intolerable pressures and enormous damage being inflicted on GP services by government policies, ‘marketisation’ and underfunding – and the dangers that these pose to patients:
The people of Peterborough know as much as anyone about the damage done by Tory government – and they face a straightforward choice on Thursday if they want to combat that damage.
The LibDems eagerly aided and abetted the Tories in their assault the essential structures of our society. The Brexit party dare not publish policies for fear of exposing their Thatcherite foundations, while the Greens cannot offer any prospect of concerted action in Parliament, let alone of getting into government.
Only the Labour Party offers policies for real change for the better and can realistically get into a position to enact them.
Voters in Peterborough who want to see change need to reject the attempts of elites and their media allies to turn them into a skewed Brexit barometer and vote for the only option available to see that change take place: the Labour Party and their candidate Lisa Forbes.
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