If Tories want a war with NHS unions they need a smarter general than Steve Barclay

The health seceretary’s hostile approach is unwise, says Sean O’Grady

Steve Barclay is schooled by Sarah Pinnington-Auld and her three-year-old daughter, Lucy, who is suffering from cystic fibrosis (PA)

In politics, you should pick your battles carefully. If you are an unpopular government with no apparent purpose to your existence, you probably don’t want to go to war with the group of workers held in almost universally high esteem by the general public. And if you do pick a battle, you need a smart general.

Enter the health secretary, Steve Barclay, who is fronting the government’s campaign to beat nurses and paramedics into submission. He is not making a tremendously good job of it, even allowing for the affection commanded by the nation’s carers versus the contempt in which Tory ministers are usually held.

Barclay, along with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, repeats the same messages about NHS pay claims, arguing that they’re “unaffordable”, inflationary and divert funds from the “front line” (despite the fact that you can’t really get much more “front line” than an ambulance crew arriving at the scene of an accident). Worse than that, the government refuses to talk to the unions about pay, pointing out that the independent NHS pay review body has already made its recommendations. Again, the public isn’t convinced and it sounds very much as if ministers are using arguments about procedure rather than substance, and hiding behind the pay review body which in any case has to work within a government remit.