Jeremy hunt

Jeremy Hunt has not done himself any favours in the past with his comments about junior doctors. But today - the first time junior doctors have ever walked out without providing emergency cover – was the time for sounding conciliatory. The Health Secretary said it was a ‘very, very bleak day for the NHS’. Hunt went on to add that: ‘The reason this has happened is because the Government has been unable to negotiate sensibly and reasonably with the BMA over a manifesto pledge’. His emphasis on the Conservative’s ‘manifesto pledge’ is a clear part of the Health Secretary’s tactics to win over the public and Hunt repeated his focus on this point several times during his interview on the Today programme.

The junior doctors’ dispute has been characterised by a series of extraordinary claims by the BMA. At one time the union claimed that doctors were going to suffer a real-terms pay cut of 26 per cent – a claim debunked by the respected Channel 4 Fact-checking team. A pay calculator on the BMA website which claimed to show doctors losing money was later removed. Yesterday, in a piece for The Spectator, junior doctor Calum Miller made an extraordinary claim that 'A&E doctors have a lower life expectancy than poverty-ridden countries like Afghanistan and Haiti'. The World Bank gives a figure for life expectancy for Haiti at 62.70 and Afghanistan at 60.51. So is the average A&E doctor in the NHS really popping his clogs in his 50s?

Today, thousands of doctors lay down their stethoscopes in a valiant defence of the state religion. More than 5,000 operations have been cancelled as a result of the latest walkout, which begins at 8am and will last 48 hours. If their placards bear the truth, those striking believe they are sacrificing themselves unto the throes of poverty for the sake of universal healthcare and the safety of their patients. Jeremy Hunt is a fool. That much is uncontroversial to say, and nobody could confuse me for a Tory-bashing leftist. I support competitive markets in healthcare, as well as the private provision of services. I support the eventual redundancy of doctors through robotisation of their roles.

At first glance, Emma Thompson’s intervention in the Brexit debate earlier this week didn’t make much sense. Asked at the Berlin Film Festival whether the UK should vote to remain in the EU, she said we’d be ‘mad not to’. She went on to describe Britain as ‘a tiny little cloud-bolted, rainy corner of sort-of Europe, a cake-filled misery-laden grey old island’. She added that she ‘just felt European’ and would ‘of course’ vote to remain in the EU. ‘We should be taking down borders, not putting them up,’ she said. I think I get the bit about Britain being ‘rainy’. That’s true, obviously, and some people dislike our islands for that reason.

A few months ago, paramedics were on the brink of industrial action. They had legitimate grievances. Ambulance services were being run down, their staffing levels were dangerously thin — and the mismanagement (much of it exposed by Mary Wakefield in The Spectator) was horrendous. But in the end they stepped back from the brink — for good reason. It went against their nature to endanger lives, and in addition it would have been a tactical mistake. If a single patient died as a result of the strike, paramedics would have lost public sympathy. Should a nationalised health service really use the unwell as a bargaining chip? English doctors have not shown the same strategic foresight.

This is a bleak day for the NHS. The doctors strike has gone ahead and some 3,000 operations have been cancelled. Talks broke down last night, and the British Medical Association has shown it is quite prepared to put patients in the firing line in its dispute over a deal that would mean a pay rise, not a pay cut, for 99 per cent of doctors. From 8am this morning, only emergency care will be provided. Treatment for that once-virulent condition, the British disease of strikes, has largely been successful. The number of working days lost to industrial action in the first ten months of last year was the second-lowest since records began. Pay and conditions have been relentlessly improving.

This morning Jeremy Hunt appeared on The Andrew Marr Show to defend his growing feud with the junior doctors. While Marr took the health secretary to task over the junior doctors' strike -- reading out a number of hostile letters from those affected, Hunt responded with an interesting form of defence. Discussing his health reforms, Hunt argued that the hostile reception he has received from both the public and NHS staff over the junior doctor contracts is perfectly normal. He then appeared to compare himself to Nye Bevan -- explaining that the Welsh Labour politician -- who served as minister for health under Clement Attlee -- had experienced a similar situation when he established the NHS: 'Look at the history of the NHS.

Treatment for that once-virulent condition, the British disease of strikes, has largely been successful. The number of working days lost to industrial action in the first ten months of last year was the second-lowest since records began. Pay and conditions have been relentlessly improving. Since the Winter of Discontent in 1979, the average worker’s disposable income has almost doubled. And no thanks to pressure from trade unions: the steady progress comes from the transformative effects of an open economy and a free market. In the 1970s and early 1980, it was miners, steel workers, railwaymen, bin men, and British Leyland car workers who earned the worst reputations for trade union militancy.