The Sun Now Backs UKIP

The Murdoch press is clearly under instruction to peddle the most virulently anti-EU line it can muster, even if it means backing the views of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage and his fellow saloon bar propper-uppers at UKIP. And a prime example of this desperation has come from the Sun’s appallingly snooty political editor Tom Newton Dunn today, as he tries to suggest that all those rotten foreigners are harming the NHS.

That’s the NHS that Newton Dunn and all the others who go private wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, but hey ho. The screaming headline tells you all you need to know: “NHS ‘bled dry by EU tourists coming to Britain for expensive cancer treatments’”. And who would the source be for this highly creative assertion? “Top doc Angus Dalgleish warns hospitals struggle to cope with pricey treatments”. Really? Do go on.

“EU citizens coming to Britain for expensive cancer treatment are bleeding the NHS dry, a top doctor claims … As David Cameron negotiates to keep us in the EU, Professor Angus Dalgleish will tell a Brexit conference our hospitals are struggling to cope with foreign patients coming for care worth up to £200,000 a year … He will say: ‘The NHS is on its knees and could collapse completely’”. Do we get an example of this “bleeding dry”?

Well, no we don’t. And nor does the Sun let its readers know that Angus Dalgleish is not the kind of “top doc” you are likely to see when visiting hospital. Since he returned to the UK from Australia in 1984, he has been a researcher. He does not work on the NHS front line. And he is a fully paid-up member of UKIP, something that Newton Dunn mentions only in passing (Prof Dalgleish’s election address can be seen HERE).

Newton Dunn then tells readers that Dalgleish “also said EU red tape has held back the search for life-saving cancer cures”. What he fails to mention is that Dalgleish founded a biotech firm developing cancer vaccines, is that firm’s research director, and sits on the medial board of another biotech firm. He is not a disinterested observer.

And his use of pejorative language like “bled dry” should surprise no-one: Dalgleish’s rants include “Following the sinister change from the EEC to the EU …”, “The EU Clinical trial directive has destroyed …”, “The EU working time directive has destroyed …”, and “The freedom of movement act [?] has destroyed …”. It’s all about destruction, see?

It’s also about paranoia: “the UK suffers more than any of the other countries in the EU, due to the fact that our government agencies rigorously enforce these suicidal directives, whereas many other countries in the EU ignore them”. Enforcement of suicide too - is there nothing these dastardly foreigners will not do in order to subjugate us Brits?

Tom Newton Dunn could have chosen any number of mainstream Eurosceptics to use in putting together his copy. Instead, he goes to a ranting Kipper with a track record of using highly inflammatory language, who can’t back up his hot air with a single fact, except to keep on telling anyone who will listen that the foreigners are coming to get us.

And it’s the Outers who say their opponents are desperate. Not at the Sun, though.