‘They ought to name off the medical doctors’ strike and hope Wes heals NHS’

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins spends her last hours in the job not doing it.

She should have been trying to solve the eleventh hospital doctors’ strike that started yesterday. Instead, she flitted round the “spin room” of a TV studio in Nottingham, vainly trying to convince viewers that Rishi Sunak is an election winner.

Ms Atkins is a key member of a Tory government that has simply ceased to govern. Knowing that the end is nigh, ministers have given up any pretence of running the country.

So what are the NHS medics striking against? Not the health service management, which has no authority to do a deal. Not the long-suffering patients. This five-day walkout is a protest against a phantom enemy. And if the lazy Tories won’t sort things out, Labour should step up to the plate.

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting talks of a journey out of the two-year conflict. “I will sit down and negotiate this journey,” he has promised.

The doctors’ union BMA has had behind-the-scenes discussions with him, and says he is listening. “We’re happy to have a multi-year pay deal,” it concedes.

It is a racing certainty (but don’t bet on it) that Wes will be in charge of the Department of Health in a week’s time. The BMA should today ask for a firm, bankable assurance he will keep his word – and go back to work.

I owe my life to hospital doctors, and I have always supported their campaign for better pay. But I honestly believe this bout of -action is a pointless protest. Come on, Wes, do your stuff and get the docs back on the wards and in the operating theatres where they belong.

If the Government won’t do the job for which they were elected, somebody else has to. It’s come to that with this lot.