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12 February 2019

Labour blame Conservatives for thousands of deaths in hard-hitting political broadcast

The new PPB is the most confrontational that Labour has produced for many years.

By Stephen Bush

Labour will directly blame the Conservative Party for the deaths of thousands of people in a hard-hitting party political broadcast to air tomorrow night at 5pm.

The video, directed by Simon Baker, the architect of the party’s widely-acclaimed Our Town broadcast and its follow-up Our Country, is the most directly confrontational video that Labour has produced under Corbyn. In the film, a series of actors, playing the role of patients, doctors and nurses in the NHS talk about the consequence of public sector cuts while a series of factual captions detailing the statistical reality flashes up on the screen, including the increased number of teen suicides since 2010 and 120,000 excess deaths in health and social care in England. 

Baker’s previous films, while widely praised across the political spectrum, generated little follow-up coverage. Labour are deliberately picking a fight here – and will likely be hoping that the resulting row will mean that their message is more widely repeated than their less confrontational recent efforts.

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