In light of the nurses’ strike, we’re going to need to rethink the NHS

Any call for more profound change still tends to fall on deaf ears. It shouldn’t, writes Mary Dejevsky

The great unifying idea of the NHS as the best health system anywhere, ever, has to be seen as the myth that it is (Getty Images)

You may support striking NHS nurses in their demands for better pay and conditions, or you may condemn them for betraying their calling. It might not be unreasonable to feel a bit of both.

My own view is rather shaded by the thought that this largest-ever walk-out by members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) would have my redoubtable late aunts – fiercely old-fashioned ward sisters and matrons – turning in their graves. Be that as it may.

The nurses, who still enjoy almost unique levels of public sympathy, could well, in the end, receive an improved offer. So might the ambulance drivers, the paramedics and perhaps even the junior hospital doctors, if they all follow suit. At that point, however, the government – any government – needs to call a halt.