Tom Richmond: What does Theresa May have to say to everyday heroes who saved jockey Declan Murphy's life?

He’s a humble hospital porter – not a discredited former prime minister by the same name – and he’s just one of the many heroes in back-from-the-dead jump jockey Declan Murphy’s acclaimed memoir Centaur that is testament to the NHS’s healing powers.

On the same tragic weekend in May 1994 when Formula One legend Ayrton Senna was killed, Murphy was given up for dead after a shuddering final flight fall at Haydock in which his skull was shattered in 12 places as the green turf turned red where his prone body lay motionless.

The prognosis was so bleak that The Racing Post published an erroneous and much-regretted page one story under this banner headline ‘Declan Murphy dies after horror fall’. Yet, thanks to lifesaving surgery, this mercurial horseman, one of the most naturally gifted to bless the turf, survived against all odds.

And now, with the help of biographer Ami Rao, the jockey who read his own obituary before making a miracle comeback, has pieced together his life story – including his glory years in the saddle prior to his brush with death that were wiped from his memory as a consequence of his fall.

Yet what makes this journey back in time so humbling – and so relevant to today’s politics – is the Irish-born horseman’s relationship with the aforementioned 
Tony as he underwent rehabilitation at 
The Walton Centre, a state-of-the-art neurology complex on Merseyside, which included the not-inconsiderable task of learning to walk again.

His words are worth repeating because individuals of humanity like Tony, the very people who are the heartbeat of today’s Britain, are not featuring in an election which is in danger of bypassing the country because the outcome is a racing certainty due to Mrs May’s risk-free strategy.

“Day in and day out he’d walk the same routes, along the same dreary corridors, wheeling people who were sick or injured or damaged, Sometimes these people were afraid. Sometimes they were angry. Sometimes they were just in pain,” writes Murphy.

“And really, if you look beyond the physical act of pushing wheelchairs around, Tony’s real role was to lift people from their lowest lows and make them feel better about themselves. I cannot think of a greatness more great.

“The memorable thing about him – the thing which endures – was that he never treated me like a patient. He laughed with me, he joked with me, he asked me questions about my old life...

“And in doing so, he created a sense of lightness in my being. Because he did something I yearned for, as one yearns for the first blush of colour after the stark whiteness of winter – he treated me like an ordinary man. His role was small, but his heart was big. When we speak of angels on Earth, these are them.”

I don’t know if Tony still works for the NHS. He could have retired by now or left through disillusionment. Equally, he could be quietly fulfilling his duties while being taken for granted by others.

Yes, I appreciate – and accept – the June 8 election is about strengthening Mrs May’s negotiating hand with the EU over Brexit. I acknowledge the need for ‘strong and stable leadership’ – the Prime Minister’s campaign mantra – and that a prosperous economy is the best way of funding the NHS, schools, police and other key services.

However, while Brexit will define the next Government, this will be, in all likelihood, the electorate’s only chance in the next five years to vote on domestic policy issues and a vision for the type of compassionate society that the country should aspire to become in the 2020s.

I assume Mrs May had people like Tony in mind when she stood on the steps of 10 Downing Street last July and promised to “make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us”, but the Tory leader rarely deviates from remarks which have been carefully scripted for TV and then repeated ad nauseam by parrot-like colleagues.

The absence of any debate is becoming insulting to the electorate. What does she mean by this and by her promise to champion those who are ‘Just About Managing’? How can the country show its appreciation for Tony, or the other unsung heroes of public life who give so much for so little? Can, or should, they be paid more when the country’s budget deficit is still an eye-watering £60bn, even before the economic uncertainty of Brexit is factored into the calculations?

These are not straight-forward questions to answer, even more so when the word ‘innovation’ – the need to do more with less – has not even been uttered by the country’s political elite. Instead they trade personal insults in an election where the same old soundbites, already wearisome exactly five weeks prior to polling day, are supposed to represent a compelling vision for the future.

They don’t. Come on Theresa May, what is your Government going to do for hospital porters like Tony and all those “angels on Earth” that Declan Murphy wrote so movingly about? An acknowledgement of their existence would be a start. They do truly matter.

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