Junior doctors pay talks to start next week – Streeting

3 comments

1. So it begins.

   It will be interesting to see how Labour deal with the unions – now that Labour are in, all the unions are going to be knocking on the door of number 10 asking for cash. And obviously, there’s not enough cash to make everyone happy, so Labour has to play their cards well.

   I imagine they’ve probably anticipated this and have some sort of plan in place – I think they already had unofficial talks with the unions before the election.

2. Give them a real offer with a look to moving to FPR and it would be over quickly.

   Yank them around and get ready for more strikes.

3. Given his attitude towards doctors while he was Shadow Health Secretary, I think Streeting’s going to be in for a very rude awakening.

   The feller has basically spent his entire career faffing around with internal politics. He went straight from University to the National Union of Students, then straight from the National Union of Students to the Labour Party. Most of that time he’s been deeply engaged in intra-party factionalism. Now that he’s got an actual position (one which I struggle to see how he’s qualified for, but that’s another conversation), this is the first time in his career that he’ll be primarily engaging with people *outside* of that sphere. And I think he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that he can no longer just run to the right-wing press every 5 minutes to get them to shit on people he doesn’t like.

   I imagine his engagement with junior doctors won’t be all that different from the Tories’.