Flying doctors

A few months ago, paramedics were on the brink of industrial action. They had legitimate grievances. Ambulance services were being run down, their staffing levels were dangerously thin — and the mismanagement (much of it exposed by Mary Wakefield in The Spectator) was horrendous. But in the end they stepped back from the brink — for good reason. It went against their nature to endanger lives, and in addition it would have been a tactical mistake. If a single patient died as a result of the strike, paramedics would have lost public sympathy. Should a nationalised health service really use the unwell as a bargaining chip?

English doctors have not shown the same strategic foresight. They cancelled 3,000 operations on Wednesday because of a dispute over pay, saying they would give only emergency care. At least some of those cancelled operations will have serious consequences, as the doctors well know. In the long term, everyone who depends on the NHS will feel a little less safe and doctors look as if they are holding a nation to ransom.