UK Labour Party Network Expects COVID-19 to Limelight Gov't Failures in Approach to NHS
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th April, 2020) A newly founded coalition of groups inside the United Kingdom's Labour party has criticized the government's handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, claiming years of austerity policies have left the nation relatively unprepared to deal with the crisis, Sputnik has learned from one of such groups.
Speaking to Sputnik on Wednesday, Cathy Augustine, a vice chair of the Labour Representation Committee and spokesperson for the grass-roots network "Don't Leave: Organise", said she hoped public opinion would rally behind the notion of a properly equipped health service, arguing government policy to date had left the UK National Health Service (NHS) struggling to cope.
"It's absolutely clear that the running down of the NHS over the past ten years has contributed to the fact we were not prepared for this [pandemic]. The Tories have crowed over 'successes' that for most of us have been failures to support our NHS. So I'm hoping that this will lead to a shift in opinion," she said.
Augustine went on to describing the ongoing health crisis as a "tragedy."
"But what's also horrendous is the fact that our nursing staff, front line staff do not have adequate protective gear, they are not being tested and there is still this notion of "herd immunity" in mind. So this Tory government and their advisers are simply uncaring. So we need to get back to making demands that these cruel people can not ignore," she said.
Augustine also argued that the recent losses Labour faced in last December's general election were partly down to factors beyond the control of socialist elements within the party, citing persistent attacks on Jeremy Corbyn as a key concern.
Instead of uniting the party in a bid to win power from the now victorious Conservative government, she argued, elements opposed to the previous leader had sought to undermine him, causing activists to focus attention on fighting internal battles rather than being active in their communities.
This had effectively been exposed in a report leaked to Sky news over the weekend indicating senior Labour officials had played an intentionally disruptive role during Labour's general election campaign in 2017 and after.
Supporters of Corbyn, including Unite leader Len McClusky, claim the 860 page report indicates that certain officials opposed to the then leadership were pre-occupied with engaging in a "Trot hunt" � itself a disparaging term used to describe pro-Corbyn activists � rather than defeating the government at the polls.
Left-wing elements within the party believe such internal disputes were instrumental in undermining the leadership, a fact that partly explains the Labour party's losses during last December's general election campaign.
"The left had to put so much energy into defending ourselves from all these smears we were quite crushed and demoralised. So part of that meant we took our eye off the ball in terms of deepening our roots in the community, working with unions and in the workplace," Augustine told Sputnik.
The Labour party otherwise appears to be at a crossroad following the election of new leader, Keir Starmer, and the repercussions of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas Starmer is generally viewed as being more left-of-centre when it comes to politics than his predecessor, his inclusion of well known opponents of the previous leader in his newly organized Shadow Cabinet has evoked concern.
The UK's struggle to contain the COVID-19 outbreak � which has thus far taken the lives of nearly 13,000 UK citizens � has also raised the question as to how the opposition might go about holding the government to account, particularly when it comes to controversial policies that critics claim have left the NHS short of at least 17,000 beds since 2010.