Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting aching to become PM – get ready for Britain to go on strike
As resident doctors start a ‘morally reprehensible’ five-day strike in search of another eye-popping pay rise, welcome to life under Labour. And it could soon get worse.
Resident doctors are starting a five-day walkout in an ongoing pay row (Image: Getty)
As Britain teeters on the precipice after 17 months of lunacy under Labour it is hard to imagine things getting any worse. But they soon could.
With Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer a dead man walking, and a post-Budget coup d’état likely, rivals are jockeying for position to assume the poisoned chalice of leading this listless government.
To illustrate the madness that could follow, runners and riders include net zero zealot Ed Miliband (Labour Party leader and leader of the opposition between 2010 and 2015) and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.
With the country on its uppers, bankrupt, broke, and devoid of hope, resident doctors will today abandon the sick for five consecutive days in pursuit of a near 30% pay rise. Talk about a perverse failure to read the (waiting) room. But this is the reality of life under a Labour government.
This will be the 13th time greedy, militant, BMA-backed medics (formerly known as junior doctors) have downed tools as they continue to place patients at risk of avoidable harm.
They have already received a significant pay rise: an average 8.8% increase backdated to April 2023, and another average increase of 8% for the 2024/25 period.
It formed part of a two-year deal resulting in an overall average pay uplift of about 22.3% across both years and which was accepted in September 2024.
Resident doctors are being taken out on strike by Dr Tom Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist and newly-elected BMA chair.
He acted as the agent for Dawn Butler, the Labour MP for Brent East, at the 2017, 2019 and 2024 general elections, and later stood for selection as a prospective MP but failed to make the shortlist.
With public support gone, and no money left, there is surely no financial or ethical case for today’s industrial action. But they’re back for more, holding the sick and needy at ransom as they do.
Mr Streeting said Labour is not going to be “held to ransom” and called the walkout “morally reprehensible”. Few would disagree with that.
But how long before Labour under Miliband, Streeting, or whoever succeeds Sir Keir, caves in to union demands?
A lot to chew on: Miliband served as Labour Party leader between 2010 and 2015 (Image: Getty)
From the moment the party entered office the Treasury vaults were opened to its paymasters.
Billions of taxpayers’ cash has been blown on inflation-busting rises – 15 per cent for train drivers, 22 per cent for junior doctors – and the unions have smelt weakness ever since.
Why? They know Labour will roll over to have its tummy tickled every time, with struggling families left paying higher taxes, higher fares, and higher bills because they have the whip hand over impotent ministers.
So, what next?
The ludicrous decision to let unions call the shots has set a dangerous precedent.
The entire bloated public sector is now on red alert and if resident doctors do get their way we can expect the line of those threatening to down tools until they too get a bumper rise to stretch from John o’ Groats to Land’s End.
It is the same old story – the hallmark of every Labour government in living memory – tax more, spend more, and borrow even more.
While patients, already struggling to be seen on the NHS, face another destructive round of chaos and confusion, Labour continues to gamble with the country’s future with promises they cannot keep, financed with debts they have no plan to repay, and leaving Britain facing the inevitable, eye-watering tax rises when Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivers her budget on November 26.
Labour has broken promise after promise as the UK lurches back to the 1970s. Why on earth should we believe anything it says any longer?
