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Less than two weeks from the next wave of strike action, Labour has agreed to sit down and talk with resident doctors.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting will meet BMA representatives in an attempt to avert a five-day walkout set to begin on July 25.

But while doctors say they’re “happy to continue discussions,” the government has already made it clear that the current pay offer won’t be improved.

That means no movement on the 5.4 per cent pay rise for this year — despite a workforce that has already seen real-terms salaries collapse by around 20 per cent since 2008.

Streeting says further strikes would be “a disaster for patients”.

But he won’t acknowledge that the disaster is already here — and it wasn’t caused by doctors.

Broken promises, broken trust

Labour campaigned on fixing the NHS and ending industrial unrest.

Resident doctors suspended strikes last year after Labour promised to deliver.

A 22 per cent backdated pay rise over two years was a start — but nowhere near what is needed to restore real-terms value.

Now, with Labour in power, doctors are being told the purse is empty — again.

The BMA says all it needs is a “credible pathway” to restoration.

That doesn’t mean an immediate fix, just a commitment to undo the damage of 15 years of cuts.

Instead, they’ve been met with the usual lines: “We can’t be more generous.” “We have to stick to fiscal rules.” Sound familiar?

This is political

The government isn’t negotiating over maths.

It’s negotiating over ideology.

Streeting wants to appear reasonable while ruling out the one thing that would end the strikes.

His department says he’s “sympathetic” to doctors’ working conditions — just not their pay.

But sympathy doesn’t pay rent.

This is the same tactic we saw from the Tories for years: talk up concern, then hide behind budget spreadsheets while letting the NHS rot.

It’s a political choice — to deny workers fair pay, to manage decline instead of reversing it, and to hope the public blames the unions rather than the government.

Public support wavers — but why?

New polling suggests public support for resident doctors’ strikes has halved — from 52 per cent last summer to just 26 per cent today.

But the question is: why?

After years of relentless disruption, the government knows it doesn’t have to win the argument — it just has to exhaust the public.

Even medical figures like Lord Robert Winston are now breaking ranks, resigning from the BMA and warning that strikes risk damaging trust.

But that trust is already fractured — not by industrial action, but by political inaction.

Labour’s credibility crisis

This is about more than a single dispute.

It’s about whether Labour can be trusted to deliver real change — or if it’s just Tory policy with a softer press release.

Doctors aren’t asking for miracles.

They’re asking for a plan.

They want some recognition that their work — and the years of sacrifice — matter.

Instead, they’re being blamed for the consequences of a system that is already broken.

If Streeting enters next week’s talks without a real offer, the strike will go ahead – and Labour will have made its position — and its priorities — painfully clear.

In the words of the BMA: “Our pay may have declined, but our will to fight remains strong.”

But Labour seems to have already given up.

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