NEWS of spiralling NHS repair costs will be a shock and a concern to the millions of working people who rely on NHS services day in and day out. But anyone familiar with the parlous state of public services in Britain and the parasitic nature of privatisation will not be surprised.

Public services are and must be a key focal point for the left and labour movement in 2025. They are a key area to mobilise resistance to renewed austerity under Keir Starmer’s Labour government and to build the broad united front of trade unions and community groups needed to win real change for working people.

The failing provision of public services — whether it be housing, education or healthcare — is also a key issue that the far right is capitalising on to build support and misdirect and misguide working people.

The faltering state of public services and the NHS are, of course, not due to refugees to migrants. It is down to decades of cuts and underinvestment.

These arguments, however, are less readily made and less immediately tangible than the cynical and easy answers of race, which is why the left and the trade unions must sharpen our arguments and our campaigning among working people.

The reality is that the NHS simply hasn’t received the necessary funding needed to maintain quality services for decades.

The fact that NHS has been able to soldier on for as long as it has — saving and making liveable so many lives — is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the millions of workers across Britain that make it possible.

A campaigning priority of the left and trade union movement must be to secure realistic funding of our NHS in order to secure and guarantee the services that working people across Britain rely on.

We need to attack the narrative that publicly owned and operated services are by their nature inefficient or inferior to privatised services. The story of privatisation in Britain has demonstrated the exact opposite.

A tiny minority of working people in Britain would entertain the prospect of a privatised NHS — but privatisation has already been effected in large scale by the back door.

Large elements of the NHS have been hived off where profitable and where the privateers can easily make a quick buck.

The whole idea that capitalists, always maintaining the mantra of maximum profit for minimum input and thereby minimum service, will ever provide a superior and cheaper service has to be attacked and defeated once and for all.

Decades of neoliberalism, from the NHS to the railways to many services besides, have proved this.

Working people pay far more for far less to monopolies that pay no tax in Britain and are entirely parasitic.

If the left is to challenge and defeat the austerity ideology of Labour and the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Reform UK, these are the arguments we must champion and win in our communities.

The fight for well-funded jobs and well-funded services is key to our battle to continue rebuilding the trade union movement and for real change in Britain.