Kevin Maguire says NHS doctors should think again before going on strike as they face a formidable roadblock in their demands in UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting
Sympathising with striking workers is in my DNA, so I hope that England’s hospital doctors think again before downing their stethoscopes.
This is because Wes Streeting has already won the battle for the public’s hearts and minds. With recent average pay rises totalling 28.9 per cent – the Health Secretary authorising 22.3 per cent over two years to settle a dispute inherited from the Tories, then this year’s inflation-beating 5.4 per cent – have transformed the mood.
We could all agree these hard-working, skilled and stressed life-savers are worth even more. But with the NHS finally getting back on its feet, waiting lists falling from Conservative record highs, patients wouldn’t be voicing solidarity on picket lines should five days of walkouts start on July 25.
Public support for the doctors has collapsed ahead of talks between Streeting and their British Medical Association trade union. New polling finding previously strong approval for industrial action by what are now called resident doctors halving from 52 per cent a year ago to just 26 per cent . As surveyor Ipsos’s senior director Gideon Skinner opined, these would be the first doctors’ strikes for some years without broad-based support from the public, with Labour voters among them.
Pats on the back don’t pay bills and muscle is key in disputes, but while participating medics voted overwhelmingly to strike in 2025 (90 per cent) as they did in 2023 (98 per cent), ballot turnout dropping to 55 per cent from 77 per cent signalled some queasiness on the wards.
Perhaps their BMA resident doctors’ committee co-chair Dr Ross Nieuwoudt was carried away when he suggested “people are excited to go again”, later clarifying docs were “energised” to strike.
How much their living standards are down since 2008 is disputed, the BMA claiming a painful 29 per cent while the Nuffield Trust puts it at a smaller 5 per cent. Still, whichever financial calculation is accepted, doctors have a case as do millions of other workers punished by what the TUC – which the BMA is not affiliated to – billed as the Tory worst wages squeeze since the Napoleonic era.
The health and political calculations the BMA must also consider are whether squandering bedside trust and the respect are prices these doctors are prepared to pay in a dispute they could lose industrially as well as publicly. Streeting’s up for the fight. Are they?
The best outcome for patients would be no strikes followed by an agreed independent review to improve earnings long-term. Wages, jobs and lives are in the balance.