STEPHEN HEPBURN: We deserve better than this Tory mess

She’s wrong on the NHS when her Mrs Complacent act leaves more patients waiting longer for treatment.

A dunce on education when Tory cuts are going to rob our children’s schools of money needed for teachers, books, desks and classrooms.

Misleading on welfare changes when most poor people work and benefit cuts will empty wage packets of the grafters.

So it’s no surprise there was no bunting on the six-month anniversary of her stumbling into Downing Street without an election after David Cameron lost Europe and his Premiership in the referendum.

Let’s judge her by actions not words when preposterous claims the Tories represent working Britons is a sick joke.

On the NHS I heard May insist her lot would invest in our health service yet even the head admits spending is about to fall per head in real terms.

Six-plus years of Tory cuts and underfunding leave the NHS on its knees, locally on Tyneside and nationally in England.

Imposing £22billion of what are euphemistically called “efficiency savings” is a terrible burden alongside £4billion lopped off the social care budget, councils such as South Tyneside and Gateshead whipping boys for Tory austerity.

I’ve only praise for NHS staff, who are miracle workers - yet nurses, GPs, hospital doctors, receptionists, ambulance crews and everybody else working in the health service will tell you it’s buckling under the strain.

May’s not done a single thing to help our NHS and much to harm it, especially when she pretends all is well when it isn’t.

They should’ve listened to everybody pleading to keep open the NHS Walk In Centre in Jarrow, and would be wise now to heed the growing band fighting to save every service at South Tyneside District Hospital in South Shields.

Hapless Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt deserves his share of the blame, but he’s the monkey and May the organ grinder.

This Tory NHS crisis is made in Downing Street and timorous Theresa the accidental Prime Minister must be held responsible.

Disastrous austerity was a political choice, not a financial necessity, and rubbing off the odd rough edge is spin when the impact continues to hurt workers, families, public services and businesses.

Judge the Tories by their own tests, and the debt junkies have a nerve to criticise Labour when our record was immeasurably superior, national debt due to double to £2trillion under the Con-servatives.

Wasting precious resources on the ideological ego trip that is a few grammar schools doesn’t add up when money will be grabbed from existing schools, and teacher shortages are harming education.

I’ll remain a May sceptic until she ends the scandal of almost a million people on insecure zero-hours contracts and finds well-paid jobs for families relying on the charity of food banks to feed hungry children.

We deserve better in Britain than this Tory mess.

Only a Labour Government can represent everybody. That’s why we need the Tories out and Labour in.