A GP strike could backfire spectacularly
It will force the Government’s hand. It will highlight the intolerable strain the profession is under. And it will make sure the state of the health service is right at the top of voters’ minds as they head to the polling booths. The leaders of the British Medical Association might imagine that timing a potential GP strike during the election campaign later this year is smart politics. The trouble is, it has the potential to backfire badly – and perhaps even cost the doctors the sympathy of the general public.
It remains to be seen whether the GPs stage a walk-out or not. According to the leaders of the BMA, the profession is tired of being “bullied” and “gaslit”, and in a survey of 391 family doctors 72 per cent said they were now willing to strike over their pay, funding and workload. Unless the Government caves in and throws another few billion at the service in the hope of muddling through for a few more months – and if we are being honest that is probably the most likely outcome – then industrial action could soon be inevitable. We can forget about any staged managed photo ops of the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak slightly awkwardly wielding a stethoscope, maybe referencing his childhood in a pharmacy. The GPs may well be on strike right in the middle of an election campaign.
Sure, on the surface that may seem timely. After all, it will highlight the doctors complaints about their workload, and make a Labour victory that already appears certain even more likely.
Yet there are two ways that it could easily go badly wrong. To start with, the doctors should not assume that the support of the voting public is as solid as they assume. With average salaries of £150,000 a year, flexible working, including three-day weeks for some, and generous pensions for many, GPs are already among the most privileged workers in the country. Few people can even dream of salaries and benefits on that scale. In a stagnant economy, where any form of meaningful growth is now impossible, there are limits to how much doctors can be paid, and what kind of increases are affordable, and we may well have already reached them. After all, no one else’s wages are going up in real terms.
Next, and perhaps most importantly, a strike will force the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, and his health spokesman Wes Streeting, into actually taking a position. The saccharine-coated platitudes about “our NHS”, and vague promises of “reform” that have worked up until now will, in the middle of a strike, seem hopelessly inadequate. Sure, they can wheel out the Rachel Reeves-bot to explain how “green growth” and “state-led investment” will fund a far better health service but that won’t be enough to last for a whole campaign. If Starmer backs the strikes, he will be exposed as supporting a privileged public sector elite that constantly demands more and more taxpayer money. If he doesn’t support it, then he risks a major row with the Left of his party at a time when he will be hoping to keep public disagreements to a minimum. It is a lose-lose situation.
In reality, GPs might be better off putting the strike to one side for now, not least given the nature of their contracts with the Government makes such a manoeuvre difficult. The one genuine contribution they could make to the election campaign would be to start talking honestly to the public about the failings of a state-controlled healthcare, what we could learn from the far better managed systems in countries such as Germany, France or Australia, and how we could get better value for the 10 per cent of GDP now spent on the NHS. A grand-standing strike might be more appealing, even if it puts the lives of yet more patients at risk, and leads to even more undiagnosed cancers and heart issues. But it may not have the desired effect – and do the GPs cause more harm than good.
