𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Wes Streeting can barely contain his desire to become the country’s next prime minister but his handling of the junior doctors dispute has revealed exactly why he would be unfit. NHS bosses fear the radical BMA could organise strikes every month as it is “hard to see” how a resolution will be reached. The latest walkout begins at 7am on Tuesday and will last for six days, mean thousands of delayed appointments. Since March 2023, junior doctors, who were recently rebranded as resident doctors, will have refused to work for 59 days in total.

Since their first strike, they have received a 28.9% pay rise and they want an extra 26%. The BMA says this is only fair as it would restore their salaries to 2008 levels before the financial crisis hit. Junior doctors have career progression that means they will earn six figure salaries and can carry out lucrative private work on the side. They are likely to end up with an annual pension of £125,000, a sum that most of the country could only dream of.

As well as the delayed treatment of patients, the stand-off means the government has now cancelled the 1,000 extra training posts it had agreed to introduce. That means the public loses out again.

How have we ended up in this mess? The BMA was once a moderate organisation representing doctors who viewed their work as a vocation, but it is now a hotbed of radicalism. But so convinced was the Labour party that the blame lay with the Conservatives that it promised to end the strikes.

While in opposition, Streeting said he was “beyond furious” at the Tories for failing to stop industrial action, attacking the then health secretary Steve Barclay. Raising fears about the impact of strikes on patient care, he said the single best thing Barclay could do to help the NHS would be to “get round the table” with the unions, negotiate, and prevent the strikes going ahead.

In the commons chamber, Streeting secured an urgent question asking Barclay what impact junior doctors strikes would have and what steps he had taken to prevent more. He said the NHS and patients could not afford more days lost to strikes, calling for the Tory Cabinet minister to “swallow his pride” and bring Acas in to mediate.

Streeting then went for the jugular, asking Barclay about briefings to the press that the government was prepared to tough out the strikes. “Would the Secretary of State look cancer patients in the eye while they wait for life saving treatment and tell them to tough it out, because they are the ones who will pay the price for his failed approach?

Streeting told Barclay he was “not a commentator” but a minister with the “power and responsibility” to end strikes.

Well, Streeting is the Health Secretary now so when is going to follow his own advice? Or is he ready to admit that he was wrong all along?

He now publicly lays the blame with the unions, accusing junior doctors of suffering from “delusion”, rather than looking at his own role in this. But after he rolled over and gave the BMA a massive pay hike only weeks after being elected without securing anything significant in return he can hardly be surprised they have come back for more.

The dispute has left the health service that Labour is so proud of in an almighty mess. Sir Jim Mackey, NHS chief executive, is looking at how to redesign the service so it cannot be held to ransom by junior doctors. He wants nurses and healthcare assistants to step up so there are few gaps left when there are strikes.

He told the Health Service Journal: “How do you build services less reliant on a transient training workforce [of resident doctors] and more on a more blended clinical family?”

Mackey also pointed out that hospitals have found services end up running more smoothly during strikes as consultants fill in for junior colleagues.

The energetic Health Secretary, who appears little touched by self doubt, was so adamant that the dispute could be resolved but we are nearly two years in to a Labour government and they are only getting worse.

Streeting believes he is destined for the top job, but he has so far failed at the one he already has. If he cannot resolve the strikes then he does not deserve to be put in charge of the country.