The junior doctors row bubbles on. This time, medics will walk out for five back-to-back days starting on September 12. Predictably, Jeremy Hunt has condemned the strike; and the BMA is blaming Jeremy Hunt.
It’s a bitter and somewhat dull stalemate which will bore many for its endless intransigence. Yet beneath this, it’s clear this latest industrial action will cause chaos: the strikes comes at such late notice that contingency plans put in place before industrial action earlier this year will not have been made. The strike is messier, too, for the increasing remoteness of a sensible compromise being struck. The BMA’s Mark Porter dismissed the 73 concessions made by the Government as ‘completely meaningless’, likening the switches to editing commas and changing a ‘word here and there’. Whilst Jeremy Hunt, in his own interview on Today, talked up those same changes, going on to say there were actually 107 different changes agreed.
Yet what was telling about Porter’s interview, was the absolute enmity with which he regarded Hunt: clear through his refusal to use the Health Secretary’s name and also his focus on what he called the ‘fundamental deception’ Hunt had ‘practised on the British public’.
It’s obvious that Hunt is toxic and seems like a barrier to finding a solution rather than a figure who can help resolve this mess. All this, then, makes the decision of Theresa May to keep him in his post a surprise (a surprise, it seems, even to Hunt himself). But as with all of Theresa May’s cabinet appointments, including those of Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, there was method behind the apparent madness.
Sticking with Hunt was a signal from the Prime Minister that the Government will not back down in this dispute. And that vote of confidence in Hunt has given him fresh resolve in this fight. It’s a resolve which, by comparison, is fading amongst the BMA, who look divided (they backed the latest strike action by only 16-14, according to Nick Robinson). This presents an opportunity for the Government, with Hunt saying he concluded in June that the only way to proceed was to stick with the contract agreed with the BMA.
In a sense, then, that whilst this latest round of strikes is unprecedented, they actually change nothing. Jeremy Hunt is as determined as ever to push through the Tory’s manifesto pledge. And with the BMA appearing more and more divided, it’s likely the public support they relied on in the earlier bouts of this row will continue to fade as they alienate more and more patients. This latest strike looks (unlike the ones earlier in the year), to be a symbol of desperation rather than power.
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