Image: Jeremy Corbyn pictured at a rally in support of the Junior Doctors in April this year. Rights: Flickr/Garry Knight.
The Labour leadership contest has been a stultifying affair, only really succeeding in damaging Labour. The contest has been made all the more tedious by the apparent absence of policy differences between Jeremy Corbyn and his challenger, Owen Smith. Many Labour MPs insist that the issue with Corbyn is his leadership skills. Yet there are significant differences between the Corbyn camp and Labour “moderates” on the NHS, suggesting the contest has a distinct political dimension.
In July this year the “NHS Reinstatement Bill”, drafted by Professor Allyson Pollock and initially presented in parliament by Caroline Lucas, was tabled for a third time in the House of Commons. The Bill’s objective is to secure the NHS as a public health service. Crucially, it seeks to reinstate the legal obligation on the Secretary of State to provide a universal and comprehensive health service: the cornerstone of the NHS for sixty years and annulled by the Conservative Party’s Health and Social Care Act of 2012.
