“Ah, but would you support the junior doctors’ dispute if a loved one was in desperate need of surgery to relieve unbearable pain and was on the ever growing waiting lists with no date in sight?” Of course, I would, I said, but now it could happen and I am not so sure.
In principle, I am on the side of the junior doctors. I am quite sure they are taking action on the grounds of principle and not money. I do not believe our doctors are, or have been, telling lies about the reasons for the dispute and I would never believe the word of Jeremy Hunt on anything. His slimy, oily “just listen to me, I’m not really a doctor” voice makes me want to introduce him to the world of orthodontics, as a patient, not a practitioner.
The BMA’s announcement of a series of five day all out strikes every month simply must not go ahead. It is for women and men of honour to get round the table and sort this wretched business out here and now.
It is not just that my partner is in desperate need of surgery to alleviate chronic pain, although that is part of it, but I am also meeting, every single day I am at work, some of the most vulnerable people in society who are in terrible health. They use, they need, the NHS more than anyone else in the land. They are often people who have nothing and no one else in their lives. I have reached the stage where I could not, with due conscience, condone a situation where someone desperately sick, infirm, near death or just suffering non life-threatening although severe pain gets a call to say their operation has been cancelled. Thanks to Jeremy Hunt and the cuts of his friends, there is no one to pick up the pieces.
Call me a Tory if you like. The friends of Jeremy Corbyn already do although the ones who have done so on social networks are no longer cyberspace friends of mine. This situation surely transcends mere politics, doesn’t it?
Theresa May’s first speech as PM was full of admittedly woolly slogans like “when we take the big calls we will think not of the powerful, but you”, something that flies in the face of anything any Tory MP has ever done. Her whole narrative was that she would be there for all of us, not the rich and powerful. Given her past record in this Tory government – she supported every single Cameron/Osborne measure to make the poor poorer and to allow the sick and disabled to carry the brunt of their attacks and she was particularly vindictive towards the police and migrants – it struck me these were likely to be weasel words that would soon be forgotten once the days of summer have made way for a long, dark winter.
And tonight, we already have May attacking the BMA, the junior doctors, just like Cameron did, just like Jeremy Hunt has done right from the start and the feeling is that far from being a new face, May represents old medicine in new bottles.
Owen Smith, the candidate who will get obliterated by the wretched Jeremy Corbyn in the current Labour leadership fiasco, called it exactly right tonight when he called for health secretary Hunt to be sacked. “He is the worst Health Secretary in history”, said Smith and no one is arguing with him on that, except the Tories.
Clear the decks, Mrs May. Sack Hunt, appoint a secretary of state and instruct her or him to reopen negotiations with the BMA with no preconditions and with immediate effect. And the BMA, for its part, to start negotiations with a completely blank sheet of paper. No one will win this dispute but many will lose, quite possibly paying with their lives. Yes, I would apportion most of the blame to the Tories and especially Hunt, but the BMA will also pay a heavy price in terms of public support and indeed respect if the strikes go ahead.
It’s too close to home for me to give unequivocal and unqualified support for the junior doctors. There probably is no other way for them to tell the public what a state the NHS is in but the promised strikes cannot be the way. I won’t be tooting my horn anymore when I pass striking doctors on picket lines. This is a step too far.
