Jo Brand, the comedian who used to be an NHS nurse, has backed Labour in a party election broadcast. The central message is protecting and improving the NHS.
The clip features a voiceover by Doctor Who and Broadchurch actor David Tennant, who also spoke in Martin Freeman’s broadcast.
The full transcript is below:
JB: There’s an election coming up. You might know that and we all have our own personal axes to grind. Mine if what’s going to happen to the NHS, not because of my undeniable status as a national fitness icon, but because once upon a time I used to be a nurse. And by the way, I’m sick of the way nurses get slagged off all the time in the press. I mean, come on, the vast majority of them are hard-working, committed, amazing human beings. Because to my mind a decent civilised society looks after its people when they’re ill and doesn’t present them with a bill at the end of it. But what I’m seeing now is little by little the NHS being pulled apart. By whom you might ask? A clue; it’s not the Labour Party. They started the whole thing. If you’ve tried to get an appointment with your doctor or been to an A&E recently you’ll know things are in a right mess.
What’s that mess all about? For a start a tonne of money wasted on a reorganisation so big you could see it from space and so hard to understand you’d have to be Professor Stephen Hawking to get your head round it. I give you the Tory Party. Let’s be honest about it, if they get back in the NHS as we know it wouldn’t survive the next five years.
Why? Because they’re planning even more extreme cuts; we know that. They don’t want to talk about it but it’s not hard to guess. What it boils down to is this: do we want a government that will back our NHS or not? I want to see our NHS make it to its 100th birthday and get its telegram from the Queen. Because that’s what it is, by the way, the NHS; it’s ours. It belongs to us all. We paid for it with our taxes and we want to keep it safe in our hands, not theirs. And that’s why I’m choosing Labour.
Voiceover: This election is a choice between the Tories’ failing plan and Labour’s better plan for working families. Britain succeeds when working people succeed. Vote Labour on Thursday May 7th.
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