Star comment: Hunt must take peace initiative
The junior doctors' strike has put patients in the position of being pawns in a bigger game, and also the piggies in the middle of two sides which both claim to have their best interests at heart.
While they and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt both vie for the mantle of being the patients' real friend, hundreds of operations and medical procedures are having to be cancelled as a result of the industrial action taking place.
It is a blight on the National Health Service and an inconvenience, and a worry for the people the service was created to serve.
In the normal course of events there would be stating of positions, and posturing and manoeuvring, culminating in a compromise and claims of victory all round. But Mr Hunt is obdurate. The junior doctors are immoveable. Whatever progress there has been, a gulf remains between the two sides.
It is as if they are speaking a different language. There is no commonality of understanding. The way Mr Hunt interprets higher death rates at hospitals at weekends differs greatly from the way the health professionals do. And when they cannot agree on that, it is not surprising there is no agreement either on how to go about addressing the issue.
Mr Hunt sees the doctors as unreasonably standing in the way of improving matters, but he needs to look to himself as well. He has played a full part and more in both sides becoming locked in entrenched positions. When he is moved on in a future Cabinet reshuffle, all those health professionals with whom he is currently locking horns will continue to be giving their all to the NHS, and investing their lives and careers in it, dedicating themselves to the ideal and to the patients.
Mr Hunt has for some reason decided he must be the tough guy, imposing his will on the people with whom, as Health Secretary, he should be working hand in hand and in a spirit of co-operation.
The NHS has enough troubles already and could do without the general going to war with the troops under him. He has made things worse by treating the junior doctors as if they are lacking in the intellect to make up their own minds on the deal being offered.
Public opinion seems to be on the side of the junior doctors, so it falls to Mr Hunt to provide some impetus to the peace process. He may think he is burying the opposition, but he is in fact digging a big hole for himself.
