Johnson talks about Brexit, Labour focuses on health

With two days until polling day, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought on Tuesday to get his election campaign back onto Brexit after coming under fire for his lack of empathy for looking away from an image of a child sleeping on a hospital floor while seeking treatment.

The story of 4-year-old Jack Williment-Barr has overshadowed campaigning for Thursday’s general election as Johnson and his Conservatives hunt for crucial last-minute votes. The opposition Labour Party has painted Jack’s plight — a sick child forced to lie for hours on a floor because no hospital bed was free — as a symptom of Britain’s ailing health system, which has suffered under years of Conservative government austerity measures.

As Labour kept up its relentless focus on problems with the National Health Service, Johnson’s Conservative Party tried to focus voters’ minds on the prospect of an uncertain result and divided Parliament, which would endanger Johnson’s plan to lead Britain out of the European Union on Jan 31.

All 650 seats in the House of Commons seats are up for grabs in this election, which is being held more than two years early in a bid to break Britain’s political impasse over Brexit.

Meanwhile, Britain’s main opposition Labour party on Tuesday sought to pile pressure on the ruling Conservatives over state-run healthcare in a bid to exploit a government weakness and divert attention from its message on Brexit.

Labour leader Jeremy Corby is trying to stage a late surge by focusing on Tory funding of the taxpayer-funded National Health Service (NHS) since the party came to power nine years ago.

Labour claims nearly 4,700 deaths recorded between October 2018 and November 2019 could be attributed to “patient safety incidents” that resulted from NHS staffing constraints.

“The NHS has to be properly funded and at the moment it isn’t,” said Corbyn, who has warned that the Tories want to sell off the NHS to private firms, threatening its key principle of free treatment for all.

“All research shows there’s a very large number of hospitals where patients are at risk because of staff shortages, because of a lack of equipment, because of poor maintenance of hospital buildings,” he told BBC television.

 “It is a serious issue.”

Opinion polls give the Conservatives a lead over Labour, but all parties are nervous about the verdict of a volatile electorate that is weary after years of wrangling over Brexit.

Johnson’s minority government hopes to secure a parliamentary majority on Thursday to help him pull Britain out of the European Union by the end of next month.

But a ruling party memo published by the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph newspaper warned that just 40,000 votes in 12 constituencies could see Corbyn becoming prime minister.

Separately, Johnson on Tuesday faced claims of plagiarism after copying a spoof version of a scene from the hit Christmas film “Love Actually” as part of his election campaign.

Britain’s prime minister is seen in a social media clip taking the part of actor Andrew Lincoln, who turns up to profess his undying love for Keira Knightley by showing her flashcards.

One of the cards Johnson shows a householder in his “Vote Conservative Actually” clip says: “With any luck, by next year we’ll have Brexit done (if Parliament doesn’t block it again).

“Your vote has never been more important, the other guy could win, so you have a choice to make between a working majority or another gridlocked hung parliament.”

The clip has been seen more than 1.5 million times since it was posted on Johnson’s Twitter account on Monday, two days before Britain votes in its third election in four years.

But a candidate with the main opposition Labour party, Rosena Allin-Khan, had already posted her version of the scene on Nov.22, as part of her re-election campaign.

“With any luck next year I’ll be your MP,” the candidate for a London constituency tells a man on the doorstep, as Christmas carols play on portable speakers.

Agencies