Withering takes exception to the message on the Brexit bus

The official Vote Leave website states: “FACT: Our EU contributions are enough to build a new, fully-staffed NHS hospital every week.”

A photograph of a ‘Vote Leave’ campaign bus showed the following message in large letters along its side: “We send the EU £350 million every week let’s fund our NHS instead”. There is quite a revelation in these statements, which I don’t think the Vote Leave people have realised; certainly no commentators that I know of have spotted it. These statements acknowledge another fact – that the NHS is being deprived of the funding it needs and that more money is needed – something the government has always denied.

One presumes that such inflammatory statements have been approved and endorsed by the Vote Leave leaders – Michael Gove and Boris Johnson. They are both on record defending the figure of £350 million. Gove has been a cabinet minister since 2010 and, during that time, has been involved in the collective decisions about both the organisation and funding of the NHS. Is he now admitting the NHS has been short-changed? As a cabinet minister, he is certainly in a position to know.

Boris Johnson has been an MP since the last election, and, as a Conservative member, has supported his party’s stance on NHS funding. To borrow from the style of the Vote Leave website: FACT: the NHS is short of money because it is the policy of this government. That’s it, plain and simple. It’s a bit rich for these two senior Conservatives to suddenly try to portray themselves as champions of the NHS.

In fact, it’s nauseating.

Withering is the pen name of a practising independent community pharmacist. Withering’s views are not necessarily those of ICP