On Tuesday the resident doctors start a six day long strike. It’s the 16th strike since this pay and conditions dispute started. At the beginning, there was a lot of public sympathy for the doctors, but I think that sympathy is waning. They saw Wes Streeting award a 29.4 per cent increase last year and now question why the resident doctors are coming back for another 22 per cent when no other group of public sector workers, including nurses, have had anything other than a low single digit increase. Don’t get me wrong, I think doctors do deserve to be paid well – they do a tremendous, high pressured job. But so do teachers. So do police officers. So do prison officers, and none of those groups are paid as well as doctors.

The government offered them a good deal, which the BMA negotiators recommended the BMA should put to their members, but the left wing clique that now control the BMA doctors committee refused to. It’s about time the BMA members revolted. The BMA, contrary to their perception, is not a professional body, it is a left wing trade union. The doctors are lions who are being led by donkeys, and very soon I suspect the ordinary BMA members will come to realise this. I wonder how solid this latest strike will be. It could be that quite a few doctors have had enough and will decide to go into work. That is often the way a strike will crumble.

The starting year one salary for a resident doctor is £38,800. Under the government’s pay deal that would go up by more than £2,000 to £41,200. Teachers start at £30,000. Police start far lower than that. And what’s more, the pay progression for doctors is much faster than for other public sector employees. And no one mentions to outstanding pension entitlements, which also ought to be factored in.

Now get this. The BMA itself has offered its own staff a pay rise of 2.75 per cent. This is lower than inflation. Quite how they can look their staff in the eye. I do not know. There is a word for the BMA. Hypocrites.

Wes Streeting is absolutely right to be resolute. I suspect he rather regrets bowing to their demands last year now.