Two seemingly contradictory notions can be true at once.

Here is the first one; doctors should not be permitted to strike, and they should henceforth be prohibited in law from so doing. Banning doctors’ from striking would hardly be out of kilter with other groups of workers whom the country decides should not enjoy that privilege. Police officers, for instance, are not permitted to strike. Nor are soldiers.

The rationale behind these prohibitions is very simple, which is that their striking is deemed to place at risk the lives of members of the public. The rationale for banning doctors from striking would be exactly the same. To argue, as many strikers do, that lives are not at risk when doctors absent themselves from work is to argue that they do not save lives when they walk through the door of the hospital. I do not believe that, and given their high level of education it is impossible to accept that the striking doctors believe that either. Perhaps it just makes it easier for them to sleep at night.

‘First, do no harm’ are the four totemic words extrapolated from the Hippocratic Oath. Hippocrates would not have approved of today’s doctors’ principle of ‘First, go on strike’.

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The unpalatable truth is that many of England’s striking medics, qualified and accomplished as they are, have all the self awareness of a toddler. The typical path to becoming a doctor lends itself to a relatively accurate stereotype. The rigorous academic requirements mean that doctors will tend to have gone to a good........

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