If you ask people what image from the Brexit referendum in 2016 has stuck with them the most, the answer is almost always some variation of: “that big red bus with the extra money for the NHS.”
The promise of £350 million extra a week for our health service was a keystone of the Vote Leave campaign and there is no doubt that many people voted in favour of Brexit on the understanding that leaving the EU would mean a better-funded NHS.
But for most of us who work in the NHS, it wasn’t much of a surprise to see people like Nigel Farage and other Leave campaigners backing away from the ‘£350 million extra a week’ pledge within days of the referendum result.
We knew the promise of any extra money for the NHS would likely prove to be entirely illusory and that our NHS would suffer badly from the political ideology driving Brexit.
Most of the prominent Leave campaigners, including Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Daniel Hannan, are on record calling for the NHS to be privatised , saying people should have to pay for NHS services or criticising the health service as “no longer relevant”.
Unlike those pro-Brexit politicians, I have worked as a hospital doctor in the NHS for 25 years.
I am a consultant radiologist and medical director, devoted to our health service because I believe strongly in what the NHS represents: quality healthcare…
