Writing in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee says that the Labour Party are losing the support of medical professionals by ignoring local campaigns to prevent hospital closures. One of her examples is the Bolingbroke Hospital in Wandworth which is the process of being closed down and replaced by a newer facility against the protests of the staff, local people and the (Tory) council. Toynbee mentions Martin Linton when discussin the political issues:
The hospital is in the constituency of Battersea, one of London's most marginal, where the Labour MP Martin Linton hangs on by a whisker. It is to his great credit that he has not succumbed to John Reidism: despite the cacophony of the local council's foghorn campaign, he is trying to explain why the services should be decanted to the new, better clinic. (He is also campaigning for a new community hospital down at the poor end of his patch.) Wandsworth Conservatives naturally hope the issue will unseat Linton at the next election: their disingenuousness is breathtaking, for Wandsworth is the council famous for selling off just about everything, from blocks of flats to two popular schools (instead of less popular ones, because the latter were on less profitable sites). If the Bolingbroke had belonged to them, they'd have sold it years ago.
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