Tories desperate to end doctors' strike
The government is desperate to end doctors’ strikes for a real pay rise (part of their campaign for “pay restoration”, reversing huge real-terms pay cuts since 2008). It knows that a serious win for the doctors will make renewed strikes in other parts of the public sector next year more likely. So it is resorting to both stick and carrot. The sticks include leaking that it plans to recruit thousands of doctors from India to break the strike. The Daily Mail quotes a “Whitehall source” as citing Ronald Reagan’s smashing of the US air traffic controllers’ union in 1982. This may not be real or...