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.
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