Labour campaign group promotes fake NHS poster
During the Copeland by election a huge proportion of the Labour campaign was devoted to scaremongering about the NHS much of which bore very little resemblance to the truth.
* They claimed that "the Tories" were proposing to remove hospital beds from Keswick Community hospital when the Conservatives were proposing no such thing and the actual proposal from the "success regime" for community hospitals was to INCREASE the number of beds at Keswick.
* They claimed that there was a threat from "the Tories" to remove Accident and Emergency service at West Cumberland Hospital when the Conservatives were proposing no such thing, and nor was the "success regime."
* In relation to the proposal from the "success regime" to remove in-patient maternity services at WCH - and this proposal did exist but all local parties oppose it - they suggested that a vote for any party other than Labour would mean that "babies will die" and be brain-damaged.
It didn't work. It may have motivated their own supporters but a lot of other people found this sort of campaign tactic pretty low. Indeed, it is possible that the Labour health campaign, and the gap between that campaign and the positions adopted by Labour county councillors at the Health Scrutiny a few weeks after the by-election, may have contributed to Labour's by-election and current parliamentary candidate, Gillian Troughton, and two other Labour "health campaigners" losing or failing to successfully defend the county council seats they contested on 4th May.
But as usual, some parts of Labour have not got the message. Not content with trotting out again the old "Vote Labour to save the NHS" nonsense, Guido Fawkes reports here that Labour Future, which is supposed to be a centrist grassroots Labour Party campaign group, has posted a fake NHS poster telling voters to buy health insurance. The poster, bearing the official NHS and Public Health England logos, claimed that “from January 2018 the NHS will no longer be a free service.”
Unsurprisingly this misuse of the NHS logo has not gone down well with NHS England. An NHS England spokesman told Guido Fawkes:
I should think so too.
Labour continue to insult the intelligence of voters with their NHS smears. They deserve to be severely punished for it in the election.
* They claimed that "the Tories" were proposing to remove hospital beds from Keswick Community hospital when the Conservatives were proposing no such thing and the actual proposal from the "success regime" for community hospitals was to INCREASE the number of beds at Keswick.
* They claimed that there was a threat from "the Tories" to remove Accident and Emergency service at West Cumberland Hospital when the Conservatives were proposing no such thing, and nor was the "success regime."
* In relation to the proposal from the "success regime" to remove in-patient maternity services at WCH - and this proposal did exist but all local parties oppose it - they suggested that a vote for any party other than Labour would mean that "babies will die" and be brain-damaged.
It didn't work. It may have motivated their own supporters but a lot of other people found this sort of campaign tactic pretty low. Indeed, it is possible that the Labour health campaign, and the gap between that campaign and the positions adopted by Labour county councillors at the Health Scrutiny a few weeks after the by-election, may have contributed to Labour's by-election and current parliamentary candidate, Gillian Troughton, and two other Labour "health campaigners" losing or failing to successfully defend the county council seats they contested on 4th May.
But as usual, some parts of Labour have not got the message. Not content with trotting out again the old "Vote Labour to save the NHS" nonsense, Guido Fawkes reports here that Labour Future, which is supposed to be a centrist grassroots Labour Party campaign group, has posted a fake NHS poster telling voters to buy health insurance. The poster, bearing the official NHS and Public Health England logos, claimed that “from January 2018 the NHS will no longer be a free service.”
Unsurprisingly this misuse of the NHS logo has not gone down well with NHS England. An NHS England spokesman told Guido Fawkes:
“We treat misuse of the NHS logo extremely seriously and we are investigating the origin of this clearly fake poster. As soon as we became aware that Labour Future had reposted this image we contacted them and asked them to remove it from their social media, which they did.”According to the Evening standard, The NHS is to investigate the fake poster.
I should think so too.
Labour continue to insult the intelligence of voters with their NHS smears. They deserve to be severely punished for it in the election.
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