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While Britain initially put up a united front, clapping for the NHS during the pandemic and continuing to show support as pressures on the healthcare system persisted, public solidarity was abruptly withdrawn when the British Medical Association (BMA) announced its latest plans for doctors’ strikes.
Following a 90% vote in favour of industrial action, on a 55% turnout, the BMA announced a five-day walkout that led to a public outcry.
Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, accused the BMA of “holding the country to ransom”, arguing that the strikes would “throttle” NHS progress on waiting lists, which recently hit a two-year low – the first April drop since 2008 (excluding the first year of the pandemic).
Members of the public I’ve personally interacted with angrily questioned why the BMA had accepted a 22% pay rise awarded between 2023-2024, only to strike again. They also pointed to the fact that resident doctors are set to receive an additional 5.4% pay award in August 2025, comprising a 4% uplift and a consolidated £750 payment, backdated to April 2025.
The issue has even created a generational rift among doctors. From retired GPs on my LinkedIn feed announcing their resignation from the BMA, frustrated that resident doctors are unwilling to endure the “paltry” pay they once did, to consultants labelling the strikes as “unrealistic and unreasonable”, the backlash reveals just how divided medical staff have become.
The most notable BMA resignation came from Professor Lord Robert Winston, an IVF pioneering doctor and household name thanks to his popular BBC documentaries. Winston announced the end of his 60-year membership in an interview with The Times in July, branding the strikes as “highly dangerous”.
The sentiment behind this disapproval is sound: they’re worried about patient safety, which rightly should always be the top priority. In the short term, strikes seem counterintuitive, but in the long term, they serve the very system critics are trying to protect.
Supporting doctors now means building a stronger, safer NHS in the future and eradicating preventable tragedies, like those seen in the high-profile Dr Bawa-Garba case, that happened due to unfair and unsafe pressures on health care staff.
Even Streeting admitted that this time, strike disruption – which ended Wednesday – “was not that bad” thanks to the “heroic efforts of frontline staff”. More operations and procedures were protected than in previous years, and A&E response times improved during the period of industrial action.
Why Resident Doctors Want More – When They Just Got More
But despite efforts to minimise disruptions, the underlying question remains: if resident doctors have already received the highest pay increase across the public sector for the second year in a row, why isn’t it enough?
According to the latest analysis by the BMA, doctors have suffered a pay erosion of 21% in real terms since 2008, which means that resident doctors – previously known as junior doctors – are still working more than a fifth of their time for free.
While a 29% pay-rise figure has been widely circulated, the most up-to-date figures published by the BMA show that a slightly less pay uplift of 26% is needed to restore pay to 2008 levels in 2025/6.
Streeting has pushed back on this, asserting that doctors have already received a pay rise of 28.9% over the last three years. However, Dr Emma Runswick, deputy chair of the BMA, told the BBC that this figure only amounts to an 8% increase in real terms when taking inflation into account.
The reasoning behind the strikes, according to BMA chair Dr Tom Dolphin, is the fact that the 22% uplift was meant to be the first step in a longer journey toward full pay restoration, but with the Government slowing down progress, doctors have been left with no choice but to strike.
Though entrusted with arguably the most selfless duty of all, saving lives, doctors are being labelled as “entitled”, “unconscionable” and “reckless”.
Are Doctors Really Being Shortchanged? Here’s The Math
But the reality is that doctors and medical students have been shortchanged for years, and it’s only been getting worse.
While we might be seen as brats for refusing to endure the supposed hardships our forebears faced – often treated as a twisted rite of passage – the fact is, that’s simply not true.
Medics today have it much harder than their predecessors. Before I’m accused of being a snowflake and chastised for not learning the value of grit, I must say that I chose this pathway of my own volition and I truly love it. And that’s exactly why I want to see it improve, not regress.
The Winston’s of the medical world enjoyed free tuition for starters. Today, students are expected to pay £9,535 a year for that, not to mention rising living costs and inflation, which even maximum maintenance loans don’t cover.
With medical degrees in the UK taking five to six years to complete, the average foundation doctor graduates with a debt of £100,000 at an interest rate of 7%. If little progress is made with repayments, that figure can do