Keir Starmer says UK's NHS needs to 'reform or die'

In the nuclear medicine department of London's University College Hospital, patients lie on beds wheeled in from all over the capital's area, where tissue disorders are diagnosed, and they are scanned and treated, particularly for cancer, with cutting-edge technology that uses radioactive tracers.

- Elizabeth Piper

The facility is a showcase for what Keir Starmer sees as Britain's National Health Service at its best, and as helping to counter the growing popularity of Nigel Farage's party, Reform UK, Starmer has vowed to advertise as 'reform or die' agenda for the health service.

His team sees the NHS in England as one area where it can offer people tangible improvements soon, a member of his team said.

So if hospital standards rise, that's where political metrics meet practical reality, that votes for Starmer's Labour Party could be won or lost as his health reform agenda is tested in local election battlefields of England on May 2. Before last year's national election, public satisfaction with Britain's run-down and overburdened health service had slumped to its lowest on record. The service was founded by Labour in 1945; nearly half the party's supporters told pollsters that improving it was their number one concern.