Are these the real politics of the National Health Action Party?

That there are few more emotive political issues than the NHS and the angry backlash at the Coalition’s Health and Social Care Act, which opens up our health service to marketisation and privatisation, is entirely understandable.

One part of the reaction to the NHS reforms has been the formation of the National Health Action Party, an electoral alliance made up mainly of health professionals who intend to contest seats in 2015 on a platform of repealing the Act. Recognising the apparent common ground with the pre-existing Health Concern, a local protest party formed around Dr Richard Taylor in response to the downgrading of Kidderminster Hospital, the NHA’s founder Clive Peedell has teamed up with Taylor – making the former MP co-leader of the party.

Whilst Peedell, fond of wrapping himself in the language of Labour left-winger and father of the NHS, Nye Bevan, describes himself as a social democrat, his partnership with Taylor’s Health Concern does little to bolster his progressive credentials.

Like the NHA, Health Concern generally appears as a centre-left party – defending local healthcare services free at the point of need – but you don’t have to dig very deep to find that this couldn’t be further from the truth.

A quick visit to the party’s website and, once you’ve got over the assault on your eyeballs (it has a somewhat garish design), you find a litany of policy statements more akin to a loose cannon right-wing Tory backbencher or the Facebook page of a UKIP councillor.

Among the site’s ‘latest news’ is an article which denies the existence of global warming quite emphatically – “No, the world ISN’T getting warmer” – and states that those who “promote” the idea that global temperatures are rising have a vested interest in raising taxes.

Slightly further down, Health Concern attack “David Cameron’s “mad” idea that everyone can be ‘married’, even though the definition of marriage, as set-out in the Prayer Book of 1662 for the last 350 years” is between a man and a woman.

Following Thatcher’s death they even posted an article which supported the former Prime Minister’s outrageous slur that Nelson Mandela was a “terrorist”, quoting the charges made at the Rivonia Trials which saw the anti-Apartheid activist imprisoned for more than 25 years.

Hardly the sort of statements you’d expect a social democrat to associate themselves with and it’s not just their website that exposes Health Concern’s real politics.

In response to a recent review of gypsy and traveller pitches in the District, Health Concern’s leader on Wyre Forest District Council Cllr Nigel Thomas said he had “a great fear that there will be an increase in criminal activity” if sites were located in his ward. These comments were even condemned by the local Tory leader who described that as “bigoted”, “racist” and “discriminatory” but Cllr Thomas stood by his words saying “the political correctness card is being played to prevent free speech”.

Although Richard Taylor, who represented Wyre Forest in Parliament for 9 years, endeared him to local voters by strongly opposing Foundation Hospitals, he also voted against Labour’s ban on fox hunting and “voted a mixture of for and against equal gay rights”.

With the NHA Party saying they won’t “be providing detailed policy proposals on issues across the political spectrum” beyond healthcare, how are voters to know exactly what they’re voting for? It’s clear that there is only one party of the NHS which will stand up for progressive values, and its one that’s led by Ed Miliband, not Clive Peedel and Richard Taylor.