Tuesday morning, 7am. Resident doctors across England walked off the wards and onto the picket line for the next six straight days. One hundred and forty-four hours of disruption. Operations cancelled. Outpatient clinics shut. Cancer patients told to wait. And what do we hear from Wes Streeting and the Labour front bench? More excuses.
This is the 15th round of industrial action since 2023. The 15th. Keir Starmer stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to end the chaos. He told the country only Labour could bring the doctors back to work. Nine months in office, and we are right back where we started — only worse.
Labour Promised to Fix It. They Made It Worse.
Cast your mind back to the general election. Labour told us, again and again, that the Conservatives could not negotiate with the BMA but they could. They handed the resident doctors a 22% pay rise within weeks of taking power, hailed it as a triumph, and declared victory. That £3 billion settlement bought peace for less than a year.
Now the BMA is back at the table demanding more, the government is offering 3.5% for 2026/27, and talks have collapsed. The lesson every Labour minister failed to learn: if you reward a strike, you get more strikes. They have taught the unions that walking out works. They cannot be surprised when the unions do it again.
Patients Are Paying the Price
While politicians posture, real people suffer. Constituents in Preston East have told me about hip operations cancelled three times. Mothers waiting weeks for their child's tonsillectomy. Cancer follow-ups bumped into next month. The NHS waiting list still sits at over seven million people, and every strike day adds thousands more.
Then there is the staggering figure that should shame the entire health establishment: NHS staff took a record eight million sick days for anxiety and stress last year. The system is broken from the inside out. People are not languishing on waiting lists because the country lacks compassion. They are languishing because the people running the NHS have lost control of it.
The Real Question Nobody Will Ask
Resident doctors say they cannot live on their pay. Fair enough — let us have that conversation. But while we are at it, let us also ask why the NHS swallows £180 billion a year and still cannot deliver basic care. Let us ask why management consultants are paid more in a week than a junior doctor earns in a month. Let us ask why every reform is blocked, every efficiency drive watered down, and every accountability measure quietly shelved.
The NHS does not have a money problem. It has a productivity problem, a leadership problem, and a political problem. Throwing more cash at it without fundamental reform is like bailing out a sinking ship with a teaspoon. Labour will not touch any of this because the unions own them.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would not be held to ransom by militant unions. We would offer fair pay tied to fair productivity, end the diversity-officer empire that has bloated NHS management, and give patients the right to be treated by the private sector — at NHS cost — when waits become unacceptable. We would stop tolerating the endless strike cycle and start putting patients first.
Above all, we would tell the truth. The NHS as currently constituted is failing. Pretending otherwise is not loyalty to the institution — it is betrayal of the patients it was set up to serve. Britain deserves a healthcare system that works. Labour cannot deliver it. Reform UK can.