What was claimed
A Guardian columnist has argued white people should be at the back of the queue for NHS treatment.
Our verdict
This is false. The article doesn’t exist.
Guardian article suggesting white people should be treated last by the NHS is fake
A screenshot appears to show a Guardian column headlined “White people should be at the back of the queue for treatment by our NHS”. But this is false and the supposed article does not exist.
Attributed to journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the inauthentic screenshot has been shared on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, and has been seen by tens of thousands of people.
A Google search reveals that the article doesn’t exist, and Ms Alibhai-Brown hasn’t written for the paper since November 2016.
The Guardian confirmed to Full Fact: “The screenshot shared is not and has never been an article or headline published by the Guardian.”
While the screenshot may have been intended as satire, we’ve seen instances of people appearing to take it entirely seriously. Even if some claims seem obviously fake to some people, we still think it’s important to fact check them, because it may not be clear to everyone that they’re not real. We’ve written about this in more detail on our blog.
We’ve seen a number of fake opinion columns supposedly from the Guardian shared online and have previously debunked articles claimed to be written by then Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer, energy secretary Ed Miliband and former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.
It’s always worth checking if social media pictures show what the posts say they do before you share them. For more advice, read our toolkit.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the article shown in the screenshot does not exist.