Wes Streeting’s Divide And Rule Tactics May Have Won Against The Doctors – But More Strikes Are Coming | Polly Smythe

When thousands of ambulance workers went connected onslaught connected 21 December 2022 to request amended salary and conditions, nan past protector wellness secretary, Wes Streeting, wasn’t awkward successful pointing retired who was responsible. In their refusal to negotiate, he tweeted, Rishi Sunak and Steve Barclay had driven NHS unit to strike, leaving patients “in nary uncertainty who is to blasted for this chaos”.

Three years and 1 wide predetermination later, nan surgical slipper is firmly connected nan different foot. Resident doctors – formerly known arsenic inferior doctors – person conscionable vanished a five-day strike, demanding a 29% salary emergence complete nan adjacent fewer years. Among placards connected picket lines calling for “pay restoration” and an extremity to “cuts truthful heavy that moreover a surgeon couldn’t hole it” were printed copies of Streeting’s tweet.

Gone is nan relaxed cognition displayed by nan wellness caput towards nan British Medical Association (BMA) successful 2024, erstwhile he agreed a woody pinch doctors that group them connected a “journey to salary restoration”. He has called this latest onslaught a “gift to Nigel Farage” and urged resident doctors to transverse picket lines and subordinate their colleagues still “turning up to work”. He has described nan onslaught not only arsenic “reckless”, but arsenic an action that “enormously undermines nan full waste and acquisition national movement”.

Union wide secretaries person been speedy to sprout back, pinch Dave Ward of nan Communication Workers Union calling Streeting’s comments “shameful”, and nan Public and Commercial Services Union’s Fran Heathcote accusing nan wellness caput of “carping successful nan Murdoch press” alternatively of negotiating a settlement. For a authorities whose narration pinch organised labour has truthful acold been mostly harmonious – isolated from Unite’s suspension of Angela Rayner complete nan Birmingham bin strikes – Streeting’s denouncement of nan BMA is nan closest Labour has travel to picking a conflict pinch nan unions. Is this nan government’s business changeable crossed nan bows?

While connected nan look of it, nan statement mightiness look for illustration nan first existent motion of confrontation betwixt Labour and nan unions, it’s worthy taking a person look astatine what is happening. Underlying Streeting’s involution are a number of factors that make nan BMA an easy target for a authorities that’s keen to show that it tin beryllium reliable connected unions and not successful nan pouch of its “union paymasters”.

The BMA is not affiliated to Labour, nor is it portion of nan Trades Union Congress, making Labour’s organization nexus to it overmuch weaker. There’s besides nan truth that guidance to nan onslaught isn’t coming only from nan government’s side: different healthcare unions person expressed unease complete existing discrepancies successful NHS salary offers. Last month, nan Royal College of Nursing called nan government’s determination to grant resident doctors a 5.4% salary summation while offering nursing unit 3.6% “grotesque”.

In a video posted connected X astir nan strike, Streeting plays into those divisions wrong nan movement, stoking hostility betwixt resident doctors and different NHS workers. He talks astir “working difficult pinch … unit that aren’t paid arsenic overmuch arsenic doctors to make judge that your salary and your profession progression and nan conditions that you activity successful are besides bully for you”.

Add to that nan older consultants and aesculapian professionals who person been having their say: that a onslaught would “further diminish nan expertise of nan NHS to deliver”, that “it is excessively soon to spell again”, aliases simply that resident doctors are being “very greedy”.

Then there’s nan drastic lurch by nan Tories – some successful authorities and guidance – to nan correct connected business matters, pinch Kemi Badenoch proposing this week to ban doctors from taking onslaught action, putting them nether nan aforesaid rules that use to police, situation officers and soldiers. This attack gives Streeting much room to coming himself arsenic reliable but reasonable.

This isn’t to take sides Streeting, who is astir apt much than happy to usage onslaught action to justify further NHS privatisation. Nor is it to undermine really galling his comments are for those opinionated retired connected nan picket lines. One expert has called them a “slap successful nan face”, while different asked wherever nan Streeting of 2022 had gone: “He was making immoderate bully points.”

But authorities condemnation of nan onslaught does not needfully bespeak a wider displacement successful its strategy towards unions. Amid frenzied attacks by Tories and their media friends connected Labour’s nexus pinch nan unions, nan reality of nan narration is each excessively often drowned out. That makes it harder to understand cardinal dynamics: it’s apt to beryllium carrier unions that nan authorities hopes to return on, not only industrially but politically.

It besides makes it harder to spot really unions’ different business priorities pass their narration pinch nan government. With truthful overmuch of Labour’s employment authorities measure near to secondary legislation, wide secretaries still person eyes connected nan prize of getting their sectoral needs met, whether that’s Unison pushing for adjacent salary agreements aliases nan Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for zero-hours statement reform. Then there’s nan truth that location are those successful Labour who are itching to clasp nan tone of nan 1980s and motorboat a full-frontal onslaught connected nan movement.

The state is erstwhile again facing nan imaginable of wide nationalist assemblage business action, pinch nurses and teachers perchance group to subordinate nan onslaught action. A decade of suppressed nationalist assemblage pay, ostentation and increases successful nan costs of surviving has challenged nan thought that definite professions’ wages are ever guarantees of a bully life. On a basal starting net of £38,831 and saddled pinch arsenic overmuch arsenic £100,000 of student debt, it’s nary longer capable for caller resident expert recruits to simply hold to gain much astatine immoderate distant constituent successful nan future.

While location are grievances circumstantial to nan resident doctors’ strikes – a shortage of speciality training posts and having to walk thousands of pounds connected exam fees, courses and instrumentality specified arsenic stethoscopes – galore of their concerns are felt profoundly crossed nan movement. Stubborn mountains of student debt, lodging costs that utterly eclipse wages and crumbling nationalist services that thrust down moving conditions are not unsocial to nan BMA.

For this dispute, Labour has utilized inter-union tensions complete NHS salary – arsenic good arsenic nan outdated thought that each resident doctors are middle-class professionals – arsenic a governmental opportunity to dodge blasted for nan strike. But that strategy won’t activity for each strikes. As nationalist assemblage unrest continues to unfold, nan government’s conflict pinch nan unions mightiness good statesman successful earnest.

• Polly Smythe is labour activity analogous astatine Novara Media