YORK’S NHS is being dismembered and undermined by a Tory government intent on privatising the health service, according to veteran left-wing film-maker Ken Loach.

The director and two-time Palme D’Or winner was in York for a screening of his film “Spirit of ‘45”, and spoke of his support for Jeremy Corbyn.

A “new mood” in the country could now - like in 1945 - deliver a landslide victory for the Labour party, he said.

He said: “1945 was remarkable for the really strong mood in the country that we were not going back to the 1930s, and we had learned in the war that you have to work together to win.

“There is a real feeling now that we are not going back to the Thatcher years.”

Mr Loach spoke of the 1945 Labour Government’s legacy in the NHS, and said the problems in York from the closure of Bootham Park, to financial problems at the NHS commissioning group show an attempt to push the NHS into private hands.

He added: “Of course it [the NHS] can be saved. It’s a classic tactic for privatisation to set a service up to fail.

“They set the railways up to fail with no investment, and they are doing the same with the NHS in that it will be pushed more and more to the private sector.

“The NHS is being dismembered, it’s clear and it’s blatant and people who work in the NHS know it.”

He said the only solution would be to vote Corbyn-led Labour party into power.

With ballot papers already sent out in the Labour leadership contest, Mr Loach dismissed MPs who have criticised Corbyn’s leadership and called for “a whole new generation of MPs.”

He added: “They are losers, they have lost two general elections. Their words are of little value, their judgements are of little value. Every judgement they have taken for the last 20 years has been the wrong one.

“That’s why Jeremy Corbyn is supported, and Owen Smith can’t even fill his living room.”