The SDLP’s energetic South Belfast MLA and candidate for Westminster Claire Hanna says that Boris Johnson cannot be trusted with the future of the NHS.
She is right but few know just how untrustworthy he is better than those who employed him. And chief amongst them is former Daily Telegraph Editor Max Hastings.
Hastings pulled no punches when he wrote: ''Boris is a gold medal egomaniac. I would not trust him with my wife nor - from painful experience - my wallet. He is much given to making threats, bearing grudges and behaving with malice aforethought. He is also a far more ruthless, and frankly nastier figure, than the public appreciates. I would not take Boris’s word about whether it is Monday or a Tuesday''.
It’s a damning indictment of the man who currently leads the Conservative Party.
No wonder the DUP is even considering trying to cut a deal with its bete noire-the Labour Party. Though the caveat that the DUP could do such a deal only if Corbyn was not leader is a non runner.
The NHS is running Brexit close as the main UK issue. Even Johnson is promising the building of forty new hospitals without dealing with the under-resourcing of existing ones.
In Northern Ireland the position is even more dire. Three hundred thousand people are on waiting lists to see a consultant. Thousands of patients (including this writer) are treated in casualty departments because there are no beds.
Hospitals are chronically under staffed. The Royal College of Surgeons say the system is at breaking point. And for the first time ever the Royal College of Nursing is taking strike action.
This health service crisis didn’t start with the suspension of Stormont. Healthcare experts and trade unions unions have been flagging up the risks for over ten years.
Since 1999 (except for four years when the UUP's Michael McGimpsey was in post) Sinn Féin and the DUP have been responsible for the Northern Ireland health service. De Bruin, Poots, Wells, Hamilton and O’Neill all held the job of health minister. Each failed it. We didn’t arrive at 2019 solely by virtue of Tory cuts and austerity measures. (Though those cuts have been savage).
The DUP claim to have opposed health cuts and produced a Westminster fact-checker to provide a track record of their votes. The fact is their support for the Conservative government cements them to all cuts because without the DUP confidence and supply agreement the Tory government would have fallen.
The DUP didn’t pull the plug on the Tories because of hospital waiting lists but because of party political advantage and posturing over Brexit.
So too with welfare reform, the misnomer the Tories use for slashing benefits to the less well off and most vulnerable.
Some local politicians including the DUP, Sinn Féin and Alliance sent welfare (a devolved matter) back to the UK for the administration of the cruel Iain Duncan Smith invention, Universal Credit and the insidious bedroom tax.
Three million working families in the UK are worse off because of Universal Credit and many of those worst affected are here in Northern Ireland.
Sinn Féin belatedly recognised the folly of the Welfare Reform Bill and joined with the SDLP and Greens to mount a campaign to thwart it, but too late.
So Boris Johnson cannot be trusted on protecting the ill, the disabled, the poor, the elderly or the most vulnerable. But with the DUP hoping they can be king makers we cannot trust the DUP to put the future of the NHS at the mercy of Johnson, Raab and Patel.
The NHS is not a matter of Green or Orange. It is not a constitutional issue. It is much more important - it is literally a matter of life or death.
Every effort must be made to reduce the influence of the DUP at Westminster, even if that means John Finucane sitting at home whilst moderate Ulster Unionists, Alliance and the SDLP go to the House.
