Today, junior doctors are staging the first ever all-out strike in the history of the NHS. Never can a stoppage have been less justified than this one. In their irresponsible greed and puerile militancy, the strikers are making a complete mockery of the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm.
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With spectacular double standards, they claim that they oppose the new contract because it is “unsafe for patients”, yet their own selfish industrial action is putting the lives of vulnerable people at risk. They profess their devotion to the publicly funded NHS, then threaten to work in the private sector overseas if the Government refuses their pay demands.
Their sense of entitlement is repugnant. They enjoy salaries, pensions and job security far beyond the dreams of most professionals, while they have been offered an excellent new deal in return for the removal of outdated weekend practices. Yet, suffused with victimhood, they act like oppressed members of the proletariat.
They are only able to get away with this hypocrisy because of their exploitation of public sentimentality towards the NHS. The former Chancellor Nigel Lawson once famously said that the health service is “the nearest thing the English have to a religion.” By cynically posing as the keepers of the holy faith and presenting every attempt at reform as wicked heresy, they have been able to protect their privileges and ruthlessly advance their own interests.
But now they have met a stumbling block in the form of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. With his air of reasonableness and quiet, almost deferential manner, Hunt may seem an unlikely figure to challenge union blackmail. But his willingness to take on the reactionary bullies of the BMA shows that he has an inner steel similar to that displayed by Margaret Thatcher when she took on the unions in the 1980s.
In the process, Hunt has taken a tremendous amount of increasingly hysterical abuse. He has been vilified as the enemy of the NHS, a Right-wing extremist, a Nazi and a potential killer. But alongside these savage personal insults, there has also been the persistent complaint that he has somehow “mishandled” the dispute. It is a refrain that is heard not just from Labour politicians and Left-wing commentators, but even, privately, from some of his own MPs and fellow Ministers.
Yet the charge is absurd, for Hunt has shown remarkable patience in his negotiations with the unions. The term “mishandled” is really code for his refusal to surrender to the unions. Effectively, his critics are arguing that he should have caved in at the first sign of trouble from the BMA. That is how most of his predecessors have acted, always desperate to avoid confrontation. So the NHS remains hopelessly unreformed, a gigantic bureaucratic monolith operating more for the convenience of its staff than the real needs of its patients.
No one elected the BMA to decide how the NHS should be run. That should be the job of our democratic politicians. Hunt has a clear mandate from the Conservative victory in 2015 to introduce a proper 7-day-a-week health service, which can only be done through a new contract. If the NHS is to improve, the privileged, picket-line poseurs have to be defeated. Hunt should be praised, not demonised, for taking his heroic stand in this battle. Even if they dislike him now, the British public will ultimately benefit from his courage.
With spectacular double standards, they claim that they oppose the new contract because it is “unsafe for patients”, yet their own selfish industrial action is putting the lives of vulnerable people at risk. They profess their devotion to the publicly funded NHS, then threaten to work in the private sector overseas if the Government refuses their pay demands.
Their sense of entitlement is repugnant. They enjoy salaries, pensions and job security far beyond the dreams of most professionals, while they have been offered an excellent new deal in return for the removal of outdated weekend practices. Yet, suffused with victimhood, they act like oppressed members of the proletariat.
They are only able to get away with this hypocrisy because of their exploitation of public sentimentality towards the NHS. The former Chancellor Nigel Lawson once famously said that the health service is “the nearest thing the English have to a religion.” By cynically posing as the keepers of the holy faith and presenting every attempt at reform as wicked heresy, they have been able to protect their privileges and ruthlessly advance their own interests.
But now they have met a stumbling block in the form of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. With his air of reasonableness and quiet, almost deferential manner, Hunt may seem an unlikely figure to challenge union blackmail. But his willingness to take on the reactionary bullies of the BMA shows that he has an inner steel similar to that displayed by Margaret Thatcher when she took on the unions in the 1980s.
In the process, Hunt has taken a tremendous amount of increasingly hysterical abuse. He has been vilified as the enemy of the NHS, a Right-wing extremist, a Nazi and a potential killer. But alongside these savage personal insults, there has also been the persistent complaint that he has somehow “mishandled” the dispute. It is a refrain that is heard not just from Labour politicians and Left-wing commentators, but even, privately, from some of his own MPs and fellow Ministers.
Yet the charge is absurd, for Hunt has shown remarkable patience in his negotiations with the unions. The term “mishandled” is really code for his refusal to surrender to the unions. Effectively, his critics are arguing that he should have caved in at the first sign of trouble from the BMA. That is how most of his predecessors have acted, always desperate to avoid confrontation. So the NHS remains hopelessly unreformed, a gigantic bureaucratic monolith operating more for the convenience of its staff than the real needs of its patients.
No one elected the BMA to decide how the NHS should be run. That should be the job of our democratic politicians. Hunt has a clear mandate from the Conservative victory in 2015 to introduce a proper 7-day-a-week health service, which can only be done through a new contract. If the NHS is to improve, the privileged, picket-line poseurs have to be defeated. Hunt should be praised, not demonised, for taking his heroic stand in this battle. Even if they dislike him now, the British public will ultimately benefit from his courage.
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