Poulter defection to Labour shows state of the party under Starmer

  • Post last modified:April 28, 2024
  • Reading time:10 mins read


On 27 April, former Tory health minister Dan Poulter defected to the Labour Party. His given reason was the absolute state of the NHS. While it’s true the Tories have violated our national health service, it’s also true the Tories have always been the party of NHS violation, and Poulter joined them anyway.

This begs the question: does Poulter actually want an NHS which works, or does he instead see Labour as a more effective vehicle for selling it off?

It’s a question NHS campaigner Dr Julia Grace Patterson thinks has a straightforward answer:

Poulter: MP by day, doctor by night

Poulter isn’t only an MP and former health minister; he’s also a doctor. He claims the experience of 20 gruelling night shifts over the past 12 months proved “truly life-changing”, and he added:

I could not go on as part of that. I have to be able to look my NHS colleagues in the eye, my patients in the eye and my constituents in the eye. And I know that the Conservative government has been failing on the thing I care about most, which is the NHS and its patients.

If Poulter joined the Tory Party and rose to the rank of health minister without ever understanding what his colleagues had planned, then he isn’t only an MP/doctor; he’s also a fucking idiot. To be fair, this isn’t a possibility we can discount.

Many people are complete idiots, of course, and many of them have risen to positions of power in the Tory Party. Poulter has been an MP since 2010, though, so if he is genuinely in favour of a functional NHS, he must be a massive idiot, because the Tories have consistently worked against that happening:

In his time as an MP, Poulter witnessed:

What did Poulter think all this was leading to?

You can’t cheer on the lumberjack and then start crying when someone calls timber.

Or maybe you can, because of course the British press have the memory and political insight of a goldfish:

People outside the Westminster bubble are more willing to question what’s going on, however.

Julia: campaigner by day, doctor by trade

Dr Julia Grace Patterson describes herself as a campaigner, author, and doctor. She isn’t currently working clinically, as she’s busy working as the chief executive of Every Doctor UK – a “doctor-led campaign organisation fighting to #ReviveTheNHS”.

Patterson writes on her SubStack:

I am appalled at what UK politicians are doing, and I feel compelled to write about it!

She’s not optimistic about what Poulter’s defection says, as she’s yet to hear anything positive from Labour on the NHS:

Patterson regularly takes criticism from Starmer supporters. Many of them think her job as an NHS campaigner is to support Starmer at all costs, even when he insists on promoting positions which will damage the NHS:

The argument from Starmer supporters is that although their man is an absolute horror show who will destroy the NHS, he will at least destroy it more slowly, and in a much more sensible fashion. They don’t say this out loud, of, but Patterson does, and they don’t disagree with her sentiment; they instead argue she needs to pipe down until after the election:

The geniuses criticising her point out that shadow health minister Wes Streeting has spoken out against the mishandling of the “NHE”:

It’s true that Labour criticise NHS ‘mishandling’, but when they reveal what they would do differently, their plan is always to carry on mishandling it:

Patterson’s position is that waiting until after the election is too late to call these things out:

Patients not patience

If Labour win the next election in a landslide, it’s going to hit the NHS like an avalanche.

Patterson is right; now is not the time for complacency.

It needs to be made clear that a Labour-led assault on the NHS will not be tolerated, and these MPs need to be shown up for what they are – a bunch of donor-backed privatisation fetishists who would have defected to the Tory Party if they had an honest bone in their body.

Because they don’t, we instead get the hideous spectacle of NHS-ruiners defecting to the Labour Party and gaslighting us into thinking they have our best interests in mind.

Featured image via GBNews / PNGTree / Wikimedia – Chris McAndrew (all images cropped)





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