Liz Truss has been told she can win back some of her lost credibility if she honours promises made to Britain's nuclear testing heroes.
The Prime Minister told the Mirror in August she'd back a medal and wider recognition for veterans of Cold War radiation experiments, but since she arrived in No10 she has sacked the civil servant in charge of medals, fired the veterans minister fighting for them, and ignored requests to meet survivors.
Labour's Rebecca Long-Bailey, who for the past 18 months has joined the Mirror in campaigning for recognition of the atomic veterans, says they should not have to wait for a change of government to see progress.
The Salford and Eccles MP told the Mirror's News Agenda podcast: "We need to keep the pressure on Liz Truss. Boris Johnson obviously met with veterans, he made them promises, and we want Liz Truss to honour those promises if she's going to have any credibility going forward.
"We've really got to ramp up the campaign and not just hope there's a Labour government to sort this out. At an event we did not so long ago, one lady said 'you can't pin a medal on a gravestone'. A lot of these men are in their 80s now and want to see justice before they go on to heaven."
Party conference has heard the Mirror's campaign is "taking on the British Establishment", while Long-Bailey was praised for being "the only person who made Boris Johnson keep a promise" when she demanded he meet veterans to "look them in the eye".
At a powerful fringe meeting, 85-year-old John Morris reduced the room to tears as he spoke of being wrongly arrested for the death of his four-month-old son Steven in 1962, which later turned out to be due to birth defects he believes were linked to radiation.
He received a standing ovation and pledges from audience members, many of them involved in writing the party manifesto, to right the wrongs of the past.
Long-Bailey said: "What happened yesterday opened the eyes of a lot of activists to go back to their constituencies and raise this issue, up and down the country over the coming months so we can get more momentum to the campaign."
In 1990, while in Opposition, Labour backed compensation for the veterans but turned its back on them when in power. Veterans have questioned whether the same thing will happen again.
Long-Bailey said: "I've got not doubt our Shadow Defence Secretary John Healey will back up the veterans when we get into power with a Labour government, but I think a lot of veterans probably at the back of their mind think 'we've heard this before, people make nice noises when they hear our stories and say how terrible it is, but we don't see any action really at the end of the day'.
"That's what we've got to change this time. Hopefully we'll see something before the next general election."
