NHS staff group goes viral with 'anyone but the Conservatives' video
A group of NHS health workers has gone viral with a video urging people to 'vote for anyone but the Conservatives'.
The Facebook video, created by campaign group NHS Roadshow, aims to 'dispel a lot of the myths' around funding, efficiency, immigration and Conservative Party policies, says the group's co-founder and NHS nurse Jacqui Berry.
The video has been viewed millions of times on Facebook in fewer than 24 hours.
Public duty
'We've got to a point where we know we can't go on like this,' Ms Berry told the Press Association, 'and we feel we have a public duty to warn voters that a vote for the government is a vote against the NHS.'
As well as being posted to a number of left-leaning Facebook groups by campaigners from NHS Roadshow, the video has been promoted on Facebook by campaign groups Momentum and Red Labour, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and prominent Labour Party candidate Wes Streeting.
NHS Roadshow organisers collaborated on a script for the video, and Bafta-nominated director Ben Williams produced the video for free, Ms Berry said.
It has so far been viewed more than four million times and shared by more than 170,000 people.
Positive feedback
Ms Berry said reaction to the campaign group at the district hospital where she works in south east England had been positive.
'Everyone is talking about the election,' she said, 'but more to the point, how we can get rid of the Tories. We don't think the NHS will survive another Tory government.'
Ms Berry said NHS Roadshow was created following a demonstration on 4 March, when tens of thousands of people protested in London against broad cuts to the NHS budget.
While the demonstration was supported by a number of trade unions and national pressure groups, Ms Berry said NHS Roadshow had no financial backing beyond donations raised at events.
The Conservatives have been contacted for comment. NHS England and the Department of Health declined to comment.
Watch the video on YouTube here
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