Editorials

Hello, hypocrisy, our old friend

11 February 2017

By Lauren E. White

In the months leading up to 23rd June last year, you may have seen a massive red bus with the suggestion to spend £350 million on the NHS instead of the European Union plastered on the side of it. You might have seen it; I mean it wasn’t a key part of the campaign or anything…

Oh wait. It was.

That photo of Boris Johnson next to it is etched into the minds of those who even briefly watched the news during the EU referendum. It was an attractive idea to get people to vote leave, of course it was.

With a National Health Service that is on its knees desperately requiring urgent funding, a promise to invest if we leave the EU was genius – and a lie.

For the record, if the NHS budget only increases with inflation, the estimated funding gap will be at £30 billion by 2020-21, according to Full Fact. If it makes savings of 2-3%, the gap will be £8 billion. Admittedly, the latter is less frightening. And, with all of that extra funding the NHS is going to get since we’re quitting the undemocratic bureaucracy, returning sovereignty to Britain with Nigel Farage leading the way in a purple cape, things won’t be so bad.

Apart from the obvious fact that has emerged in the House of Commons this week.

On Thursday night, MPs voted on whether they should give the NHS – our NHS: the one we love, will do an awful lot to protect and keep as a cradle-to-grave health anchor – £350 million per week.

No prizes for guessing what happened. (Especially if you’ve read the title of this article.)

Boris Johnson voted against the motion to fund the NHS. He voted against the pledge on the bus he travelled around the country in, preying on one of the biggest issues in the minds of the people. He told them leaving the EU would mean that funding goes into the NHS. He voted against that promise, though, exposing just how much of a hypocritical buffoon he is.

Boris isn’t the only one, though. Other Leave campaigners prominent in the Conservative Party voted against the bill too. Ian Duncan Smith – the one who resigned from David Cameron’s cabinet and cried on TV because of how sorry he felt for people less well-off than him – voted against giving the NHS the funding his campaign promised. Priti Patel and Andrea Leadsom also decided to make a mockery of 52% of people who voted in the referendum, presumably because when you’re getting paid £74,692 a year, who cares if the poor people don’t get a good NHS? You can afford private care anyway.

And we can’t forget good old Michael Gove, can we? Clearly messing up the education system wasn’t enough for him – this time he decided to mislead millions and divide a country. All he lost was his ambition to be the Prime Minister. Now he’s getting a nice wad of cash from The Telegraph and the tax payer for very little. Gove voted against giving the NHS £350 million a week too, despite being a part of the very campaign that promised otherwise.

We have known for some time that hypocrisy is a part of our democratic system. The fact that I can write that sentence and it be true is an issue in itself.

However, this hypocrisy is nothing new. But I for one find it completely and utterly outrageous. These political figures who lied to us and told us to ignore experts have gotten what they wanted and left everyone else to deal with the mess they left behind. How they sleep at night is beyond me. Knowing that you deliberately voted against a pledge you made to persuade people to vote in your favour shouldn’t be something that rests nicely with you.

Whatever happens next, it’s important we don’t forget or overlook this obviously shambolic display of hypocrisy. However often it happens, we should never become accustomed to it.

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