The Tories messed up with junior doctors. Here’s what they should have done

It takes some skill to turn the BMA into the NUM – but Jeremy Hunt has done just that. It takes nearly as much skill to persuade the public that people on £53,000 a year are scions of the oppressed working classes – but the BMA, aided by Hunt, have done that too. How did we get to the point where there is any sympathy about pay levels of anyone who is in the top quintile of earnings? Obviously the strange quasi-religious role that the NHS plays in British life is partly to blame, but the government have played a strong hand appallingly badly.

First, they have told the wrong story. The government are making this about patient safety – they say that a move to a seven-day NHS is needed because too many people die at the weekends when they shouldn’t. This they attribute to the lower levels of staffing and assert that the solution is a change to junior doctors working patterns.