𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

With the economy on life support and the nation on its knees, the misery under Labour continues with a six-day NHS strike starting tomorrow.

Money-grabbing resident doctors are abandoning their duties – and the oath they swore to look after patients – when they clear off until April 13. So much for Sir Keir Starmer’s promise to end the carousel of hugely damaging NHS industrial action before Labour won the General Election.

The action, which will see services shut down in hospitals, will cost the hard-up health service £300m and deal the shattered economy a £43m blow with The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) calculating each day medics abandon ship costing around £7.2m. This is the 15th round of industrial action by resident doctors in England since 2023 in what amounts to an unforgivable act of treachery. The last time they went AWOL in December, an average of around 17,200 walked out.

And so the misery continues, with the snail-like progress eating into the mountainous waiting list backlog, torpedoed by those who desert their posts. The eye-watering cost comes from a fall in productivity and lost working days with the CEBR saying: “The wider impacts on the economy would go beyond this, including the consequences of missed appointments and delayed treatment.”

The strike comes after the militant British Medical Association (BMA) rejected the Government’s offer of a 7.1% pay rise without putting it to members for a vote.

Under the offer, first-year doctors would have earned on average £52,000 a year, £12,000 more than three years ago.

But failure to strike a deal means resident doctors, the absent medics formerly known as junior doctors, will inflict six days of misery on the public from 7am tomorrow.

From the moment Labour entered office, the Treasury vaults were opened to its paymasters.

Billions of taxpayers’ cash have been blown on inflation-busting public sector rises, and the unions have smelt weakness ever since.

The BMA says it is walking out because Labour has not done enough to address its concerns over cash. It is an interesting claim given the latest pay offer was rejected by the union without being put to its members.

And let’s remember junior doctors were issued a 22% pay rise in July 2024. But resident doctors want a further 26% hike.

Labour says the biggest percentage pay rises would have gone to the lowest paid, with average earnings of £52,000 for those starting out, with additional hours taken into account.

For the most experienced resident doctors, basic pay would have increased to £77,348 and average earnings would have exceeded £100,000.

On average, resident doctors would have been 35.2% better off than four years ago.

After years of disruption the reservoir of public sympathy has dried up as the NHS is held to ransom.

They should all have a sniff of smelling salts and get back to work. Lives depend on it.