UK PM Keir Starmer blames Tories for 'broken' health service in England

LONDON: Prime Minister Keir Starmer blamed his Conservative predecessors for leaving England's health service in a "broken" state, in his latest effort to frame the political narrative ahead of what's expected to be a difficult budget proposal next month.

Successive Tory-led governments dealt "unforgiveable" damage to the National Health Service in the 14 years before his Labour Party's landslide election victory in July, Starmer told the BBC in an interview set to air on Sunday.

It was the latest in a series of appearances by the prime minister in which he's sought to shift the blame for the UK's mounting problems away from Labour.


"Everybody watching this who has used the NHS, or whose relatives have, knows that it's broken," Starmer said, according to excerpts released on Saturday. "That is unforgivable, the state of our NHS."

The interview comes ahead of a report expected to be published on Sept. 12 that finds reforms under Conservative Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in 2012 were "hopelessly misconceived." Starmer said the review by a prominent surgeon, Dr. Ara Darzi, would reveal that too many children were "being let down" by the NHS. The NHS, which was set up under Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Labour government in the wake of World War II, has long been a totemic issue in British politics.