Labour unveils first election poster – and it’s on the NHS

Labour’s first General Election poster is out – and it’s an attack on the Tory record on the NHS. The poster, which recalls David Cameron’s personal NHS pledge exactly five years ago, has been released online overnight:

The poster accompanies a dossier (which you can read here) that outlines Labour’s case against Cameron and the Tories on the health service, and kicks off four months of sustained campaigning on the NHS ahead of the election (including an Ed Miliband rally tomorrow). The key points made by the dossier are that under the Tories:

• Nearly 2 million people waiting longer than four hours at A&E
• Waiting lists reaching 4 million
• Ambulance response times reaching up to nine minutes
• Over 20 million patients left waiting for a week or more to see a GP or unable to get one at all
• More than half a million older people no longer getting access to social care services

It appears that the wording has been chosen very carefully (so as to say that the NHS “as you know it” cannot survive Cameron – rather than predicting the end of the NHS) – however that subtlety may be somewhat undermined by Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham’s line in the Mirror that another Tory government would be a “death knell” for the NHS.