Back to the picket lines: resident doctors say Labour’s promises are DOA
Betrayed once again: Labour sends doctors back to the picket lines.
Share this post:
Less than a year into office, Labour has already managed to push the NHS’s most overworked staff back to the brink.
Resident doctors in England — formerly known as junior doctors — have once again voted overwhelmingly in favour of strike action.
It’s the latest escalation in a long-running pay dispute that Labour, in opposition, promised to resolve.
Instead, they’ve chosen to follow the same austerity path as the Conservatives they replaced.
The message from frontline medics is crystal clear: they feel betrayed.
The British Medical Association (BMA) says pay for resident doctors is still around 20 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2008.
That’s despite a headline-grabbing 22 per cent pay award last year, and a further 5.4 per cent this year.
The union wants pay restoration — a return to the real-terms salary level before a decade and a half of cuts.
“Our pay may have declined, but our will to fight remains strong,”
said BMA committee co-chairs Ross Nieuwoudt and Melissa Ryan.
“All we need is a credible pay offer and nobody need strike.”
But Labour isn’t budging.
The government insists the deal is done.
“We can’t be more generous than we already have [been],”
said a Downing Street spokesperson — with the same logic Tory ministers used year after year to deny fair pay.
It’s no wonder doctors are furious.
“New deal for working people” — or old lies in a red wrapper?
This is not just another pay dispute. It’s a test of Labour’s integrity, and that party is failing.
Before the election, Labour’s shadow health team railed against real-terms pay cuts and pledged to rebuild trust with the NHS.
Now, in government, Health Secretary Wes Streeting calls the four per cent offer a “step forward.”
Six books are gone - 44 to go! Just click on the image, make your donation and provide your details!
But for doctors seeing pay continue to stagnate — and for unions that suspended strikes in good faith — it feels more like a slap in the face.
BMA chair Prof Philip Banfield didn’t mince words:
“There is no serious plan to reverse a decade and a half of decline. Doctors are exhausted, underpaid, and now being gaslit by a government that claimed it had our backs.”
This is the Labour government he’s talking about — not the Tories.
Starmer’s team claimed they would fix what the Conservatives broke.
Instead, they appear to be managing the decline with a slightly friendlier press release.
It raises a fundamental question: What, exactly, did voters get in exchange for their hope?
Consequences you can’t spin
The NHS is already in crisis.
The last wave of strikes led to hundreds of thousands of cancelled procedures and missed appointments.
Another round — authorised now for up to six months — could strain waiting lists further than ever.
The NHS Confederation, which represents service providers, warned the strike vote threatens to derail recovery efforts.
“It is disappointing that despite making ending the resident doctors’ strikes a priority, the government is now back to where it was a year ago,”
said NHS Confederation chief Matthew Taylor.
But the blame doesn’t lie with doctors.
It lies with a government that refuses to listen — a party that pinned its election campaign on fixing the NHS, only to keep it running on fumes.
There’s no way around it: Labour’s refusal to restore pay isn’t a matter of prudence — it’s a political choice.
A choice to protect fiscal rules over public health.
A choice to leave frontline workers underpaid, demoralised, and blamed when the system breaks.
And yet again, the government tries to downplay the strike mandate — pointing to a 55 per cent turnout, as if democratic legitimacy suddenly depends on turnout thresholds. That’s another Tory tactic.
And isn’t it funny how they never apply that logic to general elections..?
Divide, conquer, and undercut
Adding insult to injury, Labour has offered even less to other NHS staff.
Nurses and midwives were offered a measly 3.6 per cent — prompting the Royal College of Nursing to call the offer “grotesque.”
Consultants and specialists are now being balloted for their own industrial action.
Rather than unite the NHS workforce behind a new era of support and respect, Labour is fostering division and resentment.
That’s not leadership.
That’s cowardice.
Labour’s honeymoon is over
It’s not just the NHS feeling the chill.
Teachers have also been offered four per cent — accepted by some unions only on condition of full funding, which the government has already hinted will come via “smarter spending” (Whitehall-speak for more cuts).
Starmer promised voters “Change”.
What they’re getting looks dangerously like business as usual – with different branding.
Labour MPs have made sure their pay keeps pace with inflation.
They’ve protected their own pensions, perks, and salaries.
Perhaps it’s time they lived under the same conditions they demand from the people holding our health system together.
If Labour wants to avoid a political implosion, it must remember who put it in power — and why.
Right now, it’s not just doctors being pushed to the edge by Labour politicians.
It’s the voters who believed them.
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
‘Journalists’ who persistently publish fake news should be gagged
Time to stop fake news? Columnist Sarah Vine has published questionable information that may lead to the victimisation of a minority group. Shouldn’t she be penalised for it?
Share this post:
Non-Disclosure Agreements stopping people from whistle-blowing on criminal behaviour may soon be outlawed, but here’s a form of communication that absolutely should be hushed up: FAKE NEWS.
That is particularly true in the case of those whose false information may lead to discrimination against particular groups.
So, for example, here‘s Sarah Vine, political-column harpy and ex-wife of Michael Gove: “One in five new cars in the uk are bought by Motability – with taxpayer’s money – so they can be distributed to people with ‘disabilities’ including constipation and food intolerances. No wonder this country is bankrupt.”
This is false for several reasons. I’ll deal with the last point first because it’s very easy: the UK is not bankrupt and never can be because our government issues its own currency through the Bank of England and may therefore always finance its debts.
As for the substantive issue raised by Ms Vine, here‘s ‘Disability Rebellion’: “Can we please stop with all the “anyone on PIP can get a free car” nonsense?
“1 You have to be receiving the highest rate of mobility [element of the Personal Independence Payment disability benefit] to be eligible.
“2 The upfront costs of a Motability car can run into the thousands depending on the person’s needs and whether or not adaptations are needed.
“3 You LEASE the car and the cost of the lease is taken from your PIP.
“One more time for the hard of hearing: MOTABILITY CARS ARE NOT FREE!”
This Writer tends to believe that should be one more time for the hard of thinking.
Here‘s Ms Vine again to cement that belief in our minds: “That’s just the data… I didn’t make it up. How does wanting to make sure that the right people get these entitlements instead of a load of freeloaders make me a ‘bad journalist and a worse human’? Surely the opposite is true. Or are you too blinded by your own prejudice to see that?”
Her critics argue that she’s a bad journalist because she doesn’t have credible sources.
Here‘s Danny Lee: “That’s not even factual data, its from the Taxpayers’ Alliance that has been known for years to post misinformation, paid for by no other than the Conservatives’ donors.”
And here‘s Romy Cerratti: “The cars aren’t ‘distributed’ to people with disabilities Sarah. That clearly implies they are free, which they very much aren’t. The conditions you mentioned are also most often part of other conditions, as most of us disabled people suffer from multiple health problems! And even if someone is getting PIP only for IBS, it will be a very extreme case that is totally debilitating. You clearly know very little about the whole PIP process and disabled people’s lives.”
Whether Ms Vine’s information comes from the Taxpayers’ Alliance or another source, the information as she provided it is clearly inaccurate because it encourages people to believe that people with irritable bowel syndrome can get a car for free because taxpayers shell out for it instead. They can’t; it isn’t; they don’t.
But the fact that she has published these claims may lead to disabled people being exposed to harassment, alarm, distress, or even violence.
Six books are gone - 44 to go! Just click on the image, make your donation and provide your details!
Come to think of it, the planned Respect Orders are supposed to be there to stop people being exposed to such traumas – so perhaps a disability-representation organisation like DPAC or Inclusion London could slap such an order on Ms Vine when they come into effect?
Vine is often criticised over her columns, by people responding most often to her comments on gender, sexuality, race and class. She has not (yet, to our knowledge) faced either professional or legal penalties over them – so she continues to flood the social media with nonsense like that quoted above.
And she’s not the only one.
The material published by such people is potentially hugely dangerous – especially in the volume in which it now appears – but the authorities do nothing.
Isn’t it time that changed?
If you believe media figures should be held accountable for repeatedly spreading misleading or discriminatory information, write to your MP.
You can do it via theyworkforyou.com
Ask them to support stronger oversight mechanisms for media accuracy — especially when false claims affect vulnerable communities.
Share this post:
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
No more silence for sale: Non-Disclosure Agreements must never trump the law
Justice gags torn up: non-disclosure agreements about sexual harassment and discrimination are to be outlawed.
Share this post:
The Labour government’s plan to ban Non-Disclosure Agreements that silence victims of harassment and discrimination is long overdue — but the real scandal is that such agreements were ever treated as valid in the first place. Civil contracts cannot be allowed to override the criminal law.
It’s one of those truths that ought to be obvious: if someone has been harassed, abused, or discriminated against, no private agreement should be able to stop them from speaking out.
The criminal law of the land must come before any civil contract.
And yet, for years, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have been used — and abused — to do precisely that.
Now, the Labour government says it will end the practice.
An amendment to the Employment Rights Bill will make it illegal for employers to use NDAs to silence victims of sexual misconduct or discrimination.
“Time we stamped this practice out,” said Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
She’s not wrong.
But the question must be asked: how was this ever allowed to happen?
Let’s be clear: NDAs that attempt to stop someone reporting a crime are not legally enforceable.
You can’t contract your way out of the law.
Yet that’s not how they’ve been used.
These “agreements” — drafted by powerful employers and waved under the noses of frightened, often isolated victims — have been used to intimidate and silence, not legally bind.
Zelda Perkins, the former assistant to Harvey Weinstein who broke her own NDA to expose his abuse, has spent years campaigning to stop this practice.
She rightly calls it a “horror” that the law, in effect, protected “the powerful person in the room, not the victims of a sexual crime.”
The reality is that many people who sign NDAs don’t know their rights.
They don’t realise that such clauses are often legally meaningless.
Six books are gone - 44 to go! Just click on the image, make your donation and provide your details!
But they work because the fear is real — fear of retaliation, of being sued, of losing one’s livelihood.
When you’re up against a company with lawyers and money, even a bluff can look like a threat.
That is why the law must now make it crystal clear: no NDA can ever silence someone from reporting a crime. Not now – not ever.
NDAs have a legitimate place in protecting trade secrets or intellectual property.
But when they are used to cover up misconduct, they become tools of corruption.
They turn abuse into just another risk to be managed.
They allow institutions to protect reputations instead of people.
They turn justice into a private transaction.
This legislation, if passed, will bring the UK in line with countries like Ireland, the United States, and parts of Canada, where similar bans already exist.
It’s a welcome change — but also a damning indictment of how much silence has already been bought, and how much suffering has already been hidden.
We should never have needed a new law to say that the criminal law comes first.
That should have been a given.
And yet, here we are — and the least we can do now is make sure this shameful loophole is closed, permanently.
Justice done behind closed office doors is no justice at all.
Share this post:
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
Frances Ryan is right: child v disability poverty is a false choice framed by Labour
Labour is trying to divide those who need help the most by saying they can only support one group – not both: it is a trick taken straight from the Tory playbook.
Share this post:
Frances Ryan, writing in The Guardian, has summed up a disturbing shift in Labour’s rhetoric:
“No.10 is starting its new narrative: ‘We can’t stop the two child limit ‘cos they made us U-turn on disability benefits.’”
Her point is simple, and it’s one Labour needs to hear loud and clear: poverty isn’t a zero-sum game.
The idea that helping disabled people somehow rules out helping children – or vice versa – is a deeply cynical political framing that has no basis in economic reality.
It’s a narrative designed to stoke division among the poorest in society while leaving the super-wealthy untouched.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
A manufactured dilemma
The two-child limit – a cruel Conservative-era policy that punishes families for having more than two children – pushes roughly 100 children into poverty every day.
Labour previously opposed the cap, but now appears to be rowing back, citing affordability concerns (according to Dr Ryan) after pressure to reverse other unpopular welfare reforms, particularly regarding disability benefits.
This is a false dilemma.
There is no serious economic argument that says a wealthy G7 nation like the UK cannot afford to protect both disabled people and children from poverty.
What we’re witnessing is not financial necessity – it’s political cowardice, dressed up as tough fiscal discipline.
The money is there
The UK is an extraordinarily wealthy country.
But that wealth is hoarded at the top.
The richest one per cent hold more than 20 per cent of national wealth.
A small wealth tax, a fairer income tax system, reversing recent tax cuts, clamping down on tax avoidance – any of these measures would more than cover the cost of scrapping the two-child limit and strengthening support for disabled people.
In fact, organisations from the Institute for Fiscal Studies to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have consistently pointed out that eradicating the two-child limit would lift 250,000 children out of poverty almost overnight.
Experts have also offered numerous costed solutions.
Six books are gone - 44 to go! Just click on the image, make your donation and provide your details!
Labour cannot claim ignorance.
This is a choice.
Get my free guide: “10 Political Lies You Were Sold This Decade” — just subscribe to our email list here:
👉 https://voxpoliticalonline.com
Divide and conquer: an old trick
Pitting disabled people against low-income families is a page straight out of the Conservative playbook.
The politics of scarcity – telling the public “we can’t help everyone” – is designed to lower expectations and break solidarity.
It’s a strategy that says, implicitly: if you’re struggling, blame your neighbour, not the system.
But the truth is, disabled people and families with children often overlap.
Nearly half of all children in poverty live in households where someone is disabled.
There is no clean divide between “child poverty” and “disability poverty” – they are mutually reinforcing.
Labour’s moral test
Labour has an opportunity – and a responsibility – to set a new direction.
The party once stood for solidarity and universal social justice.
Instead, we are now seeing a dangerous drift toward technocratic austerity, cloaked in the language of pragmatism.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have repeatedly said they want to make “tough choices.”
Tough for whom?
It’s always the vulnerable who are asked to tighten their belts, while billionaires and big corporations get sweetheart deals and tax loopholes.
Frances Ryan is right: this isn’t a contest between children and disabled people.
It’s a test of Labour’s values.
And the party is failing it.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
There is another way
We should refuse to accept this artificial scarcity. The truth is simple:
-
We can afford to scrap the two-child limit.
-
We can afford to properly support disabled people.
-
We can pay for it by taxing extreme wealth and cracking down on avoidance.
-
We must stop pitting one vulnerable group against another.
Vox Political stands with Frances Ryan, and with the millions of people in this country who deserve more than false choices and calculated neglect.
It’s time Labour MPs remembered who they are supposed to be fighting for.
Share this post:
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
Labour’s Respect Orders: a new, dangerous attack on free speech
No respect for free speech: the scope of Respect Orders is currently limitless – and potentially a serious danger to civil liberties.
Share this post:
The Labour government is quietly introducing a deeply authoritarian measure that could criminalise online dissent — and ministers are hoping you won’t notice.
Tucked into the new Crime and Policing Bill, currently making its way through Parliament, is a power called a “Respect Order”.
These orders may seem harmless but make no mistake: they represent a serious threat to freedom of speech in Britain.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
What is a Respect Order?
A Respect Order is a court-issued ban that can prohibit anyone from saying or doing anything at all that the court deems likely to cause “harassment, alarm, or distress” to others — even if no crime has been committed.
These orders can be:
-
Issued without a trial
-
Based on vague or subjective claims of emotional impact
-
Granted without notifying the person targeted
-
Unlimited in scope or duration
-
Punishable by up to two years in prison for breach
This is not speculation.
Here’s what the bill itself says:
“The court may prohibit the respondent from doing anything described in the order or may require the respondent to do anything so described… on the balance of probabilities that the respondent has caused, or is likely to cause, harassment, alarm, or distress to any person.”
In short, this isn’t about punishing wrongdoing — it’s about policing potential future behaviour, including what people say online.
Why this is dangerous
These powers are deliberately vague and elastic, which makes them perfect tools for censorship.
With such a low bar — someone, somewhere might feel distressed — Respect Orders could be weaponised against campaigners, whistle-blowers, local critics, or even journalists.
Professor Andrew Tettenborn, a legal expert, warns:
“This essentially amounts to ‘precrime’. The poster can be compelled, on pain of prosecution, to delete content, stay off social media, and even provide passwords to all their devices.”
And once you’re under a Respect Order, breaking its terms — even unintentionally — becomes a criminal offence.
This is not about tackling violent crime or public disorder.
It’s about giving officials the power to silence inconvenient people, often without public oversight.
Get my free guide: “10 Political Lies You Were Sold This Decade” — just subscribe to our email list here:
👉 https://voxpoliticalonline.com
Labour’s pattern: power first, scrutiny later
What makes this especially alarming is how Labour appears to be pushing this through — quietly and cynically, without telling anybody or doing anything to encourage public debate.
Six books are gone - 44 to go! Just click on the image, make your donation and provide your details!
This is not the only time the Labour Party has done this. Facing defeat on the Second Reading of the Universal Credit Bill, Labour promised to remove clauses involving restricted eligibility and cuts in Personal Independence Payments – but instead inserted retained them, adding caveats that they would not be introduced until after reviews took place (but giving no assurances that those reviews would have any effect on the changes that would be implemented).
The intention was to minimise scrutiny and media coverage – and it seems to have worked, because This Site seems to be the only one making a fuss about it.
Now we can see that they’re doing the same with the Crime and Policing Bill.
There has been no serious announcement about Respect Orders.
No press release.
No front-page coverage.
Why? Because they don’t want the public to know what these powers really mean — or how widely they could be used.
But these orders will soon be available to police, councils, and even social landlords — some of the very bodies most hostile to public scrutiny.
Six books are gone – 44 to go!
Just click on the image, make your donation
and provide your details!
What you can do
-
Write to your MP (via www.theyworkforyou.com if you don’t already have their contact details): Demand they oppose Respect Orders and vote against this provision in the bill.
-
Share this article: Talk about the issue before it disappears behind committee-stage smoke.
-
Watch the Bill’s progress: Follow parliamentary debates and report any attempt to expand or pass these powers quietly.
-
Support civil liberties groups that challenge censorship and abuse of process.
The government’s approach here is simple: introduce control quietly, then enforce it loudly.
If we don’t speak up now, we may not be allowed to later.
Share this post:
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Be among the first to know what’s going on! Here are the ways to manage it:
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (bottom right of the home page). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
5) Follow Vox Political writer Mike Sivier on BlueSky
6) Join the MeWe page at https://mewe.com/p-front/voxpolitical
7) Feel free to comment!
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Cruel Britannia is available
in either print or eBook format here:
The Livingstone Presumption is available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
- ☕ Support Vox Political on Ko-fi or donate via PayPal
- 📘 Buy our books — political analysis and satire you won’t find elsewhere
- 📨 Join the mailing list for real headlines, direct to your inbox
- 🔗 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter/X
