Striking resident doctors have overplayed their hand ...Middle East

Resident doctors have walked out again, their 12th strike in two years. And the demands of the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ trade union, may seem excessive. It is demanding “pay restoration” to the income levels of 2008 for resident doctors, who we used to know as junior doctors. When inflation is factored in, it would mean a rise in salaries of something like 35 per cent.

The Government is offering a 5.4 per cent increase as of August, and public opinion is, according to a YouGov poll this week, is turning against them.

Yet it is not impossible to see why the BMA thinks its demands are potentially realisable. Since coming to office last July, the Labour government has been confronted with a number of public-sector pay disputes, and, however many times Rachel Reeves might use the phrase “fiscal discipline”, there has been a common factor. When it comes to public-sector pay and the demands of trades unions, Labour has folded like a Mars Bar on a hot radiator.

In May this year, as the recommendations from pay review bodies were submitted, the Government was generous: consultant doctors, dentists, teachers and prison officers in England were awarded a four per cent increase, NHS staff on Agenda for Change contracts, including nurses and midwives, received 3.6 per cent, the armed forces were handed 4.5 per cent and civil servants have been awarded 3.25 per cent.

That was small beer compared to resident doctors. Over the last two years, they have seen their pay rise 22 per cent. They still maintain, correctly in a technical sense, that their salaries in real terms are lower than before the financial crisis.

You could be forgiven for wondering whose salary is not, but see things through the BMA’s eyes for a moment: by striking 11 times in two years, they wrung a 22 per cent increase out of the government, and lots of other public sector workers have won higher pay from the current administration. Why would resident doctors not reach for the stars?

This speaks to a battle that goes to the heart and soul of the Labour Party. However much Labour has changed, especially in the 30 years since Sir Tony Blair was elected leader, it remains the party of the trades union movement, the party of organised labour. Eleven unions remain formally affiliated to the Labour Party, including the three biggest, Unison, Unite the Union, and the GMB, and those three alone represent three million workers. The affiliates elect a third of the National Executive Committee and choose half of the delegates to the annual party conference.

The party was born in 1900 as the Labour Representation Committee, an alliance of unions and other socialist organisations. These are Labour’s people, woven into the fabric of the party, and it was always likely that the public sector unions in particular, Unison and Unite, would find a sympathetic ear on matters of pay. The BMA is simply following in their footsteps.

The resident doctors’ strike puts the spotlight on the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting. He has been sharply critical of clinicians who are withdrawing their labour – it “enormously undermines the entire trade union movement”, and he has called the strike “unprecedented” and “unreasonable”.

“The BMA leadership’s decision to not even consider postponing these strikes will place an enormous burden on their colleagues, and hit the recovery we can all see our health service is making.”

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Streeting is as ambitious as Lucifer, and 20 years younger than Sir Keir Starmer. There is no question that he wants to be prime minister — does that make his stance against the union political suicide?

Not necessarily. The government is struggling badly, and there is a refrain heard again and again: people want change. They want results.

Streeting knows that his career hangs on making some headway with reforming the NHS over the next four years and being able to point to real improvements when Labour faces the electorate in 2029.

While substantial sums of money are being poured into the colander, which is the NHS, Streeting also needs to be seen as an agent of change, a disruptor. Vested interests are now targets for populist ire.

That YouGov survey could be the key. More than half the public now opposes the doctors’ strike – 52 per cent are against, 34 per cent back the doctors.

So far, Streeting has played the situation well, aligning himself firmly with patients waiting for operations and anxious families, but he has also managed a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger attitude towards the striking medics.

He is a deft politician, and he can see which side he needs to be on — and it is no longer that of the resident doctors. The BMA may have done him a considerable service.

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