The BBC is lathering coverage over a new report claiming that austerity caused a slowdown in the rate of increase of life expectancy. This slowdown is not a new finding, it has been discussed for years and is the reasoning behind the “130,000 deaths from austerity” lie. The problem is that whilst left wing academics try to link it to austerity, the same slowdown in life expectancy growth has been true in Portugal, Hungary, Spain, the Netherlands and France — not just the UK.
Why has this been so politicised? The author of the report, Michael Marmot, is a far left activist. In regular articles for The Guardian, tax-and-spend obsessed Marmot has:
Not that this activist history was mentioned in the BBC’s reporting. In fact this morning on the Today Programme, The BBC introduced him as someone commissioned by the coalition government, when the reality was he was working for Gordon Brown’s government. The corporation only belatedly corrected this on their Twitter account…
Correction – we said the report “Fair Society Healthy Lives” was prepared for the Coalition Government. It was actually commissioned by the Brown Government. The Coalition Government adopted elements of the report for its public health strategy, outlined in a white paper in 2010
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) February 25, 2020
The BBC continually promotes left-wing campaigners as if they are impartial academic experts. Whenever advocates for lower taxes appear their ideological leanings are highlighted. The same highlighting should apply to left-wing activists…
UPDATE: Chris Snowdon has taken apart the report here.
