With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass

IN the already inadequate parliamentary debate about the perilous state of our NHS, the discussion will rightly touch on the numbers of nurses, on the closure of wards and hospitals, ambulance waits, patients on trolleys in Accident and Emergency, waiting lists, cancer care and cancelled operations.
It will also sometimes – not often enough – include the intolerable burdens Tory cuts and policies are placing on NHS staff and the resulting risks to patients.
But it will never, or almost never, involve discussion of the government’s Integrated Care plan, even though it underpins and cements the harm done to the NHS by decades of neoliberal policies – and will lead to more and more patients not receiving the care they should.

Keir Starmer’s £120 million to Sudan cannot cover the government’s complicity in the RSF genocide or atone for the long shadow of British colonialism and imperialism, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE


