PD: Schlein’s counter-proposal: ‘With us, healthcare spending will be 7 per cent of GDP’

‘We have tabled a bill to bring healthcare spending up to the European average of 7 per cent.’ If the centre-right parties win, “they will raise military spending to 5 per cent of GDP”, but “if we win, we must commit” to raising healthcare spending to 7 per cent of GDP “together with the entire progressive alliance”. Elly Schlein is outlining what appears, to all intents and purposes, to be a counter-manoeuvre to the one the Government is preparing. She is doing so whilst speaking at the PD’s national assembly in Rome. With a message addressed to all forces across the broad political spectrum: “I am ready to lead this community and to lead it as a candidate for Prime Minister, with or without primaries”.

“This candidacy,” Schlein added, “is, together with this extraordinary leadership team, a broad and inclusive effort to change the very concept of leadership in this country – a concept to which another woman has chosen not to contribute for the better.” “We have a responsibility to win the next election. I want to do this with you, with courage, with determination, and with the pride of someone who knows that when we are united, we can change the destiny of our country,” the secretary emphasised – “And I want to tell you that I am ready, determined, honoured and proud to lead this extraordinary community, which is unrivalled in Italia.”

“The people in the streets are calling on politicians to take responsibility for making concrete decisions that benefit those who study, work and produce. The government is ignoring these voices. It has been the longest-serving and most ineffectual government; Meloni has squandered a historic opportunity,” said Schlein, launching an attack on the government. According to the PD secretary, the Prime Minister “has failed to deliver a ‘reform’ that would bring about real, positive change in the lives of Italians, who are now taking to the streets poorer and angrier than they were yesterday”.

The PD secretary also responds to the Prime Minister on the energy front: ‘What has happened over the last few days is worth a comment. The Meloni government has gone to great lengths to sell a reprimand from the EU Commission as a victory. Today it finds itself doing what we have been calling for since April: capping gas prices. Since Meloni attacked me, saying that it took me too many days to respond to her attacks, had she responded six months ago, we would have spared Italian households a financial bloodbath.”

‘We need an Italia that starts believing in and investing in state schools once again as the primary place for social emancipation. A social lift that we must get up and running again because it’s broken and it’s suffocating inside. Schools are open to everyone; Article 34 of our Constitution states this. I say this because Meloni has said she does not understand what the banner hung by young people and children saying ‘No one here is a foreigner’ means; I want to explain it to her myself. It means that in our classrooms we do not see Italians and foreigners, but girls and boys.”