As the NHS is plunged further into debt and chaos, the strikes look to have no end in sight.
Doctors, radiographers and consultants have walked out of our hospitals and goodness knows how many people will have been turfed off waiting lists, regardless of their clinical priority.
Being a heath professional is not what it was.
News is starting to emerge of the collateral damage. ‘Human interest stories’ popping up on news channels.
People struggling-by, disadvantaged, in pain, muddling along, devastated and in tears.
Existing in the no-mans’-land created buy the two sides in the war.
Care rationed by shop stewards.
This is serious. This is not student politics. This is a vicious battle and like all battles it will end in sorrow, casualties, regret and recrimination.
How pleased then, relieved even, we all must be, that the NHS Confederation has awoken from its summer slumber, its leader, back, bronzed from the beach… has stepped in.
Matthew Taylor…
… his rallying cry. His call to action. His St Crispin Day. His HenryV moment;
‘Something…’ he says, ‘something, desperately needs to change…’
Well who would have thought it. Who could have guessed. Such insight. Such a stirring. Such leadership…
… ‘something’. Of course!
Such rubbish. Such vacuous, empty rhetoric… something must be done.
Gimmestrength.
Of course ‘something’ has to be done, changed… but what, where and by whom?
Let’s start with some home truths people won’t want to hear. The doctors have lost this strike.
If HMG was going to settle, it would have done it weeks ago. Rishi Sunak has said there will be no more negotiation. It’s over… 190 days with no talks. What does it tell you?
There will be talks on the 200th, 210th day? I don’t think so.
This is an unpopular government. Settling with the doctors won’t win them an election.
Settle now and people will say; ‘Why didn’t you do it weeks ago?’
They’ll look beaten and that’s no way to go into an election.
Their focus groups are telling them being ‘tough’ is a winning policy. Tough on migration, tough on ‘benefit-scroungers’, tough on spending. Making tough decisions.
People feel, in public they should support doctors, in private they think 35% is bonkers.
Being soft on strikers doesn’t seem like a winning policy to them.
Tuff-love… ‘it may not be popular but I’m going to do what’s right’. That was Sunak in June. He said much the same last Sunday morning, on the telly.
This week at the Tory conference, one of the shops is selling Keir Starmer flip-flops.
Read the room, doc’s, get the tone, the direction of travel… it’s about ‘tough’. So, what happens next?
There will be a catastrophe.
A child will die. Someone will come to grief. Data will be published pointing to excess deaths associated with the strikes. The BMA will dissemble and shift and deny the data. The newspapers will erupt.
The GMC will have to get off its commodious backside.
HMG will say… what they’ve said throughout. Doctors have had a decent pay rise, 35% is out of the question. Public opinion will turn against the strikers.
Perhaps I’m wrong, maybe not, but this is a gamble the junior doctors dare not take.
The consultants know it’s over. They’re looking for a way out. They offered to stop striking for 12%. It didn’t happen.
Yesterday, they offered to stop striking, to get around the table. It won’t happen.
It’s over.
The consultants have next to no public support. Stories are emerging of them charging £3,000 to cover a shift during a strike, on top of a £100k+ salary.
This is not ethical. It’s profiteering, greedy and ugly. The public won’t have that. The consultants will quietly find an exit.
What should the JD BMA do?
They are dealing with a government that has a ‘pile the bodies high’ legacy. Frankly, they don’t give a… $£!^.
Cutting waiting list was a political target, now they have the perfect excuse not to achieve it.
Tory strategists know they’ll lose the election. Leaving a mess for Labour to fix will slow them down and distract them. They did it the election they knew they’d lost to Blair.
Doctors should call off the strikes before they do irreparable damage to their reputation as professionals and to someone’s family…
… and concentrate on Labour.
Labour might be content to watch the Tories get into a deeper mess. However, they could rise above the fracas, look statesmanlike.
Do a three year deal, now, promising to fix pay restoration on day one of a Labour administration…
… end the Tory government, end the strikes, vote labour… is an attractive war cry.
That’s my answer to ‘something has to be done’.
Spell out a few home truths and ring yer mates in the Labour Party, Matthew.
If the Confed have a better ‘something’, let’s hear it.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
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