It’s the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year and strikes will undoubtedly dominate. Both sides feel they have a political advantage. Rishi Sunak sees his anti-strike laws requiring minimum service levels as a way of uniting his party and claiming that Labour don’t care about the basic safety of the public. Keir Starmer sees the walkouts as symptomatic of a wider government failure to protect public services. Both men have weaknesses.
The government hopes that the public will lose patience, even with highly-respected healthcare workers
Labour’s analysis about the public sector being on its knees even when workers aren’t on picket lines has a fair bit of currency. The NHS activity from Sunak and Health Secretary Steve Barclay over the past few days has appeared rather like the pair playing catch-up instead of part of a long-term plan. Indeed, on Monday when Barclay unveiled the latest measures to ease pressure on emergency care, he faced criticism from fellow Tory MP Sir Edward Leigh, who told the Health Secretary:
‘What is our long-term plan? We cannot leave the Labour party to have a long-term plan while we do not. How are we going to reform this centrally controlled construct? People of my age have paid taxes all their life and their only right is to enjoy the back of a two-year queue! What is the Secretary of State’s plan?’
Barclay did give him a long answer about elective recovery and integrated care systems, but Leigh didn’t seem convinced. As I write in today’s Sun, there is little evidence that ministers acted on early warnings about the winter crisis, so it’s easy to be sceptical that they’re listening now.
The problem for Labour is that the unions walking out today in the ambulance dispute are – unlike many of the others holding strikes – Labour affiliated organisations. Unison and GMB are taking action across most of England and Wales, bar the East of England. Sunak has regularly accused Starmer of being more interested in serving his ‘union paymasters’ than in the safety and convenience of the public, even when the unions in question have never had much to do with the party. So the Labour leader will come with prepared answers on the Labour union link today too.
The answer that we are unlikely to get from today’s session, though, is how long the current strife will go on. Currently ministers are determined to hold the line on pay, and the Treasury has ruled out a one-off hardship payment for NHS staff, so the threats of more strikes for months on end continues. The government hopes that the public will lose patience even with highly-respected healthcare workers. Labour hopes that the walkouts will only contribute to the abiding impression that the government has broken Britain.
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