If I was elected Labour leader today...

The UK "Welfare System" stinks : nearly 90 people a month are dying after being declared "fit for work", while seriously ill patients, like my wife, who has very Severe ME, are just being left to "rot" in agony for decades, with no investigation, help or treatment  !

If I was elected Labour leader today, I would like to know:


  • Why are all public services being re-engineered for the benefit of private capital ? (Monbiot 2015)
  • Why has "Big Society" become  "nothing but  a cover for privatization of public services … a money-spinner for the city and the private care providers" ? (syzygysue 2011)
  • Why are there such significant links between the British government and the American healthcare insurance business ? Why   has a philosophy of disability denial has been thoroughly  adopted by the DWP ? (Stewart)
  • Why is  the welfare state"being dismantled and rebuilt as a machine to manage and discipline the workforce into accepting precarious labour, low pay and no social safety net."? (Penny 2015)
  • Why for more than two decades there has been  a coerced smear campaign designed specifically to abuse and ridicule M.E patients ? (Lewis Gabrielle 2012)
  • How many more people will be pushed, by M.E.,  an despised, awful,   ignored, untreated, disease, to kill themselves ? Where is the hope ?
  • Why is "recovery" defined  so loosely in ME that in the PACE Trial, which is currently used as the "Gold Standard"to influence NICE and the medical profession,   patients could get sicker over the course of the study and were still said to have recovered ? (Rehmeyer 2015)
  • Why for over two decades have   Wessely School psychiatrists been allowed to " tirelessly influence Government Ministers and Departments of State and the medical insurance industry.... about what they term "medically unexplained" disorders, notably ME/CFS and Gulf War Syndrome, both of which they assert do not exist." ?(Williams 2007)
  • Why is ME misrepresented, not investigated and not medically treated ? Why is  it  widely portrayed  as  if its underlying cause  has ceased to exist,as if there is none, as if  it is not a serious disease, as if it is going to resolve by itself and that patients become seriously physically  ill because they  think the wrong thoughts ?
Finally, if I was elected Labour leader today I would issue an  apology  for the deliberate and consistent degradation of ME , the psychiatric mistreatment and misinformation , the rampant  medical neglect, the lack of respect for the many who have died from ME without proper medical understanding or appropriate treatment, or even proper acknowledgement  on their death certificates.

But I won't be elected. As a full-time carer for someone with Severe ME, I could not be more invisible.

Greg Crowhurst


References :

Monbiot G (2015) Britain’s Mafia State ://www.monbiot.com/2015/09/08/britains-mafia-state/

Lewis G (2012) http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20140122145147/http:/www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Submission-by-Neuroimmune-Alliance2.pdf

Penny L(2015) The art of cruelty: why the Conservative attack on disabled people harms us all http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/welfare/2015/09/art-cruelty-why-conservative-attack-disabled-people-harms-us-all

Rehmeyer J (2015) Epistemically Challenged: Julie Rehmeyer http://www.senseaboutscienceusa.org/epistemically-challenged-julie-rehmeyer/

 Stewart M From the British Welfare State to Just Another American State http://www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-date/from-the-british-welfare-state.html

syzygysue 2015 Welfare Reform and ME/CFS http://think-left.org/2011/08/04/welfare-reform-and-mecfs/

Williams M (2007)  Psychiatrists Paid by Outside Interests http://www.sophiaandme.org.uk/collusion.html

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