Keir Starmer has threatened to withdraw the offer of thousands of new training positions for resident doctors if the British Medical Association (BMA) doesn’t call off strike action within 48 hours.
The prime minister has adopted health secretary Wes Streeting’s new tactic to prevent resident doctors from striking by threatening to renege on established parts of the deal.
To be clear, the BMA wants those training positions, but they’re not a bonus or luxury — it’s training for NHS doctors. Starmer is risking jeopardising the NHS for a fucking bargaining chip.
Worse still, he chose to announce this utterly backwards ultimatum by writing in right-wing rag the Times. Actually, I take that back. The Times is the perfect platform for the anti-union shower that is Starmer’s Labour.
Doctors’ strike is over jobs and pay
On 25 March, the BMA announced six new days of strike action. The news followed the Resident Doctors Committee’s (RDC) vote to reject the government’s latest offer on pay and jobs.
The RDC called out the government for moving the goal posts during negotiations. Negotiators said that, at the last moment, the government reduced the original investment on the pay element of the offer and said they’d stretch this over a three-year period.
Then, on 27 March, snake-in-the-grass Wes Streeting wrote to resident doctors, trying to play them off against their union.
As you know, the committee rejected that offer on your behalf. That is why I thought it important to share the full details of the package with you, so that you can make your own judgement about what it would mean for you and your career in the NHS.
Does anyone remember five months ago when Streeting was trying to play the public off against the residents? He’s got literally one trick, and it doesn’t fucking work.
Among the elements of his offer was a 4.9% uplift to average basic pay between 2026 and 2027, which would make them an average of 35.2% better off compared to four years ago. Likewise, Foundation Year 1 residents would see increases of 6.2% and 7.1% for Foundation Year 2.
Of course, what Streeting fails to do is put that “35.2% better off” into proper context:
The health secretary is trying to compare the uplift to the point at which resident’s pay was at its most shamefully degraded. However, the whole point of the last several years of strike action is proper pay restoration, which the government is still failing to take seriously.
Starmer: This time it’s ‘deeply personal’
Following Streeting’s latest utter failure to sway the residents or their representatives, Starmer has now joined in on the union-bashing. You’d better believe his Times article is exactly as much of a shower as you’d expect.
He wrote:
Last week, the BMA resident doctors’ committee rejected a historic deal. They now have 48 hours to reconsider. For patients, for the NHS, and for the doctors they represent — they should.
A thriving NHS. Decent working conditions. Fair pay. These are objectives that the BMA committee and I share.
For me, they are also deeply personal. My family’s life has been shaped by the NHS: my mum served as a nurse, my sister works in care and my wife continues to work in the service today. I know first-hand the dedication it demands and the pressures staff have been under.
Yeah, your family works in the NHS. You, however, work in fucking government. I think it’s a bit more “personal” for the residents themselves, don’t you?
The PM went on to reiterate the terms of the rejected deal, mentioning a total pay rise of 35% over three years, reimbursements for Royal College exams, and 4,500 new speciality training posts over three years. However, he threatened that these terms “will be gone if this deal isn’t put to a vote on Thursday”.
He failed to mention the RDC rejected the deal precisely because spreading the pay rise over three years wasn’t part of the negotiated deal. This is why RDC chair, Jack Fletcher, accused the government of shifting the goal posts.
And again, training positions aren’t a luxury for the residents, and I’m genuinely amazed that I’ve got to say this. Having trained doctors is a direct benefit to the NHS, which Starmer is now threatening.
‘It will end in a negotiation room’
In reply, Dr Fletcher told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “writing in newspapers and issuing threats” isn’t the way to negotiate a settlement.
We’ve made clear to the government what it would take to essentially get back to where we were – which was back to before this shifting of the goalposts.
Making threats about withholding jobs from doctors and essentially stopping doctors from caring for patients is not a realistic or credible way of ending this dispute – it will end in a negotiation room.
I’m happy to sit down with the government at any point to try to negotiate a settlement but I don’t think that’s done by writing in newspapers and issuing threats unilaterally, I think that’s done in a negotiation room in a constructive way.
Like his health secretary, Starmer is trying to go over the union’s head, using wilful damage to the NHS as a bargaining chip to end the negotiations.
Starmer’s threat to take away training posts from resident doctors shows precisely where his priorities lie. He knows residents want to improve their work, he knows the NHS benefits directly from better-trained doctors, and he knows doctors care deeply about their NHS. However, he’s also exposed himself.
The only people who clearly don’t care about damaging the NHS is the government, with Streeting and Starmer first among them.
Featured image via the Canary
