A stand-off between Labour and the BMA is coming

Junior doctors will be staging yet another walkout in the week running up to the election: five days in total, from 27 June to 1 July. It is the 11th walkout since March last year, as the union insists they will not settle for less than a 35 per cent pay raise.

The dates are no coincidence: there is no moment more politically fueled than the run-up to polling day. This gives more weight to the government’s argument that these strikes have always been political in nature, and certainly resulting in political consequence: the NHS waiting list rose by roughly 500,000 after Rishi Sunak pledged to get the waitlist falling, due in part to hundreds of thousands of delayed appointments and operations thanks to the strikes. 

This next strike will put at the front of the public’s mind how strained the relationship is between the Tory party and the British Medical Association (BMA) – one that polling suggests has garnered more sympathy for the doctors than for ministers.