Conservative win: But our movement is stronger than ever

We’ve given the December 2019 General Election campaign everything we have. But the struggle to save our NHS must grow if the NHS is to last another term of the Conservatives in office.

A message from national KEEP OUR NHS PUBLIC

The Conservatives have won the election.  And there’s no questioning that this is devastating news for the NHS. It was a close fight but their lies and media spin, backed by right-wing billionaire media moguls swayed the electorate. Though the NHS was the biggest issue for so many people, in the end the vote was on Brexit – not austerity and public services. But our message also reached a huge number of people, and all is not lost. Over 4.5 million watched our videos, one million people signed our #HandsOffOurNHS petition and hundreds of thousands of people engaged with our content. And millions of people voted for other political parties whose stance on the NHS is much closer to our own. It’s clear there’s a huge and growing audience for our message and an army of people willing to get involved to save our NHS.

The strength of NHS campaigning forced the Conservatives to make electioneering promises on the NHS and we will hold them to what they said. We will expose the lies and campaign for safer funding, safer staffing, an end to privatisation and protection for the NHS from trade deals.

Now is the time to redouble our efforts, take to the streets and join the fightback.

The news that Conservatives have been asked to form a Government doesn’t bode well for the future of our services, the last ten years have shown exactly how they defund, deregulate and privatise the NHS and now they intend to include its services and drugs in trade deals with the Trump administration. Pursuing their plans for local ‘integrated care systems’ – 44 separate NHS units in England – will see further rationing or exclusion of important NHS treatments and more, huge multi-billion pound private contracts. But they won’t get away with it in silence – we won’t let them.

Our Co-Chairs of Keep Our NHS Public, Tony O’Sullivan and John Puntis said:

“We are truly proud of the campaign waged in defence of the NHS by Keep Our NHS Public, by Health Campaigns supporters and so many NHS staff, students and campaigners up and down the land. We have made a very real difference and have contributed to ensuring the NHS was high in voters minds. We are very disappointed at this election result. We believe the result could have been even more disappointing if we had not been so active. By challenging the lies of Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and those who went before them we have highlighted the truth about the crisis in the NHS. Now we must deny Boris Johnson the way clear to continue his project, which includes trade talks with the US which will endanger the NHS in a US-UK trade deal post-Brexit. We now resolve to continue to campaign, lobby and fight to ensure that our voice is heard and our demands are met to fund the NHS fully and to return the NHS to 100% public duty and provision as soon as possible”.

We fought a hard campaign about which we can be incredibly proud. And our movement is now stronger than ever. This means we’re in a strong position to grow and keep up the pressure whatever comes next.

Even though our supporters, members and staff worked tirelessly to achieve all this, we will not rest until the NHS is safe. 2020 is when the struggle for our NHS continues.