Continued strike action is unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers and patients, given the UK’s financial constraints, ballooning pension liabilities, and already generous public investment in their training and benefits, says Maxwell Marlow

To borrow from the great Dane, Hamlet, something is very rotten in the state of England. As I set about thinking up policies to get Britain building again, it’s a phrase I keep returning to. But there’s another Nordic phrase which has reared its head this week.

“Never pay the Danegeld, for the Dane always returns” has been a favourite of anti-strike figureheads. Harking back to Anglo-Saxon England, taxes were levied on the English to pay as tribute to the Vikings in the North in order for them not to attack. As any economist will tell you, people respond to incentives, so the Danes kept coming back for ‘geld’ and the attacks continued. History is repeating itself, but this time with the NHS.

Junior Doctors, or Resident Doctors as they’re officially known, have received two above-average pay rises since Labour took office this time last........

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