Junior doctors are harming patients and support for NHS with their cruel strikes

“FIRST, do no harm.” The sacred words of the Hippocratic Oath sworn by newly qualified medics.

The wellbeing of every patient, young or old, was ­paramount. Until last week.

Now, in an act of unprecedented cruelty, tens of thousands of junior doctors have broken their promise and pulled the plug on life-or-death medical care.

Patients are likely to have already died thanks to their walk-out in pursuit of a cloud-cuckoo 35 per cent pay rise.

Countless more — including you and me — are at risk from “rolling strikes” right up until Christmas.

And in an astonishing twist of the knife, RCN nurses have just rejected their union’s recommended five per cent pay deal and voted to join the strike.

They had made a demand for 19 per cent.

For the first time ever, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing will both abandon the sick, the desperate and the dying.

Few would deny our hard-working frontline NHS workers a decent pay rise.

Indeed, many might say they are worth more than the current offers.

Yet Unison’s far-from- docile leadership has accepted precisely the same five per cent offer. It will fall to them and a few RCN strike-breakers to hold the line.

Even Labour health spokesman Wes Streeting — himself a cancer survivor — insists both the pay demands and the strike action are insupportable.

“There just aren’t circumstances in which I’m going to say I think it’s right to remove cover for emergency care,” he said. “

That would be the wrong thing to do.”

On Sky’s Sophy Ridge programme, he criticised Health Secretary Steve Barclay for writing “like an agony aunt” in yesterday’s Sun on Sunday.

But he also urged nurses not to abandon their patients.

“The RCN has enjoyed widespread public support in previous industrial action because they have gone out of their way to protect emergency care and cancer care,” he said.

“I’d appeal to them to continue to protect patient care because, with the junior doctors’ strikes this week, I am really worried about patient safety.”

‘I am really worried’

Streeting stands out among Keir Starmer’s shabby shadow cabinet line-up as a voice of reason.

But he was also underlining the electoral risk to Labour from any link with militant extremism.

Labour insiders are acutely aware of their shrinking lead over the Tories.

Starmer’s grotesque attempt to paint Rishi Sunak as “the paedophile’s pal” has backfired badly.

With local elections looming, the last thing Labour wants is to be caught red-handed alongside striking emergency workers, ballooning NHS waiting lists and a muffled drum-roll of avoidable deaths.

Voters are already sick of striking rail workers who mostly earn far more than they do.

They have lost all sympathy for hardline teachers who left children high and dry ­during Covid and are now, unbelievably, sabotaging their pupils’ life chances with the threat of a strike timed to hit GCSEs.

Families battling to put food on the table can see most public-sector workers are doing rather nicely.

Economy is creaking

The Blob’s average wages are a stonking 11 per cent higher than private-sector earnings, plus they have longer paid holidays, open-ended sick leave entitlement and little risk of the sack.

Few might be classified as “fat cat” bureaucrats.

But plenty qualify as the “hidden unemployed”.

Best of all, they can look forward to inflation-proof, final-salary pensions, almost extinct outside local and national government.

Perks like these are out of the question for families who must count their pennies while inflation pushes bread and butter into the luxury goods bracket.

Yes, we would like to see doctors and nurses earn more.

But we also know the economy is creaking after Covid and the war in Ukraine.

The left-wing BMA absurdly claims junior doctors are on less than a Pret A Manger barista, but millions of hard-working Brits — including Sun readers — live in the real world.

They might see the £180BILLION NHS, with its striking doctors and placard-waving nurses, in a different light if, as Wes Streeting fears, they can’t get life-saving cancer care before Christmas.

Or if they turn up at hospital with a stroke or a heart attack only to find the doors of A&E slammed in their face.