Medical Matters

The existential crisis in the NHS is not being caused by the doctors' strike. The doctors' strike is being caused by the existential crisis in the NHS, which goes back to the Blair Government's signature domestic policy of privatising it in England. That idea existed only on the fringes of the thinktank circuit until Tony Blair, Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan took office in 1997. Since then, it has been the policy of all three parties except under Jeremy Corbyn, and of most Labour MPs and all Labour Party staffers continuously.

Only Andy Burnham has ever privatised an NHS hospital, but in September 2009 he modestly proposed that the NHS should be its own preferred provider. Peter Mandelson's and thus Jeffrey Epstein's Progress wrote to Burnham to protest that he was "restricting the use of the private sector in the NHS", and using its eponymous magazine to opine, not only that "With an election approaching, Labour has regrettably adopted anti-market rhetoric on health", but that, "The pro-market principles espoused by Andrew Lansley are the right ones." When were the expulsions and the proscription?

Burnham's position was called "profoundly worrying", and its endorsement by Unite was branded "insulting and ignorant", by the Deputy Chief Executive of the Association of Chief Executives. Don't laugh. All right, do. But that person was Peter Kyle. The utterly ruthless determination to install Mandelson's schoolboy protégé, Wes Streeting, as Keir Starmer's successor is because those who set the line are only 99.9 per cent certain about Burnham on NHS privatisation, a 0.1 per cent deficiency that is enough to make them hate him to the marrow of their bones, whereas they have absolutely no doubt about Streeting. Nor should they have, as may be attested by Peter Thiel's and thus Jeffrey Epstein's Palantir, which has laid waste to Gaza, which is laying waste to Lebanon, which is probably hours away from laying waste to Iran, and which has perfected the art of tracking people via their health records for the benefit of ICE or of anything like it in, say, Britain.

Streeting says that this strike will cost the NHS £300 million. What would otherwise have been done with that money? It is clearly available, so use it to settle the dispute. By striking for a rate of pay that retained the most committed and engaged staff, the resident doctors are striking to save the NHS. You do not have to be poor to be right. If your pay has not kept pace with your private employer's profits, then you have a legitimate claim. Or if, like the NHS doctors, your pay from the currency-issuing State has not kept pace with inflation, then you have a legitimate claim.

Strikes are supposed to be disruptive, and arranging them to cause the most disruption is fundamental to them. Strikes in the NHS do not, in themselves, pose a threat to life, as if Aneurin Bevan, of all people, had never thought to put the necessary safeguards in place. I'll give you a clue. He did, so they are. The NHS flourished in the glory days of British trade unionism. Strikes have always been planned for. There is no threat to patient care, and any Health Minister or informed commentator knows that in detail.