Will Rishi Sunak Perform Yet Another U-Turn To End The Nurses' Strike?

Rishi Sunak this week stopped being Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.

After managing to survive 50 days in Number 10, he has surpassed Liz Truss’s ill-starred tenure as PM.

But during his brief time in charge, Sunak has managed to earn an unenviable reputation for being willing to completely change his position when the pressure’s on.

We’ve already seen two major U-turns - one on housebuilding targets and the other on onshore wind farms - brought on by the prospect of Tory backbench rebellions.

Now, it seems only a matter of time before he is forced into his biggest about-face yet as he tries to end nurses pay dispute which saw members of the Royal College of Nursing walk out on Thursday. A further 24-strike is due next week.

So far, ministers have stuck to the same line on nurses’ pay as they have on other public sector workers taking part in the growing winter of discontent - that the government has accepted the recommendations of the various pay review bodies and won’t be re-visiting the matter.

But with trade unions unwilling to accept the real-terms pay cuts on offer, the pressure is building on the PM - not least from senior Tories - to relent.

Former Conservative chairman Jake Berry - a man with an axe to grind after being sacked by Sunak - spoke for many of his colleagues when he said the current offer on the table to nurses was “too low” and that compromise was needed.

“There is no do-nothing option except continued strikes,” he said yesterday.

“And I just think the cancellation of probably literally hundreds of thousands of non-urgent appointments has huge repercussions for an already-overstretched health service.

“That’s why I think it’s reasonable to say in this regard, it is time for pragmatism and talking between the government and the unions. I don’t see why that is controversial.

“Machismo and sort of chest beating and ‘we’ll take the unions on’ doesn’t work. You only get these things sorted out by talking.”

Dr Dan Poulter - a GP - and former cabinet minister Robert Buckland are also among a growing band of Tory MPs who believe compromise is urgently needed to bring an end to the dispute.

Public support for the nurses’ fight remains strong, meaning the political damage for the government grows whenever they take to the picket line.

A veteran Tory MP told HuffPost UK: “I’ve been around long enough to know that there will invariably be a compromise found.”

Labour can hardly believe their luck. A party source told HuffPost UK: “I just don’t understand what they are thinking - do they think ‘crush the nurses’ is a viable strategy for the country or a good look? He’s just going to end up looking weak again.

“It’s notable that the Tories who think strategically can see a mile off this isn’t going to work.

“It’s absolutely bonkers they didn’t get that strike called off and instead let us use PMQs to frame all the strike action around it. It’s not just that Sunak has no vision - there’s no political strategy either.”

For now, though, the prime minister appears to be digging in.

Speaking in Belfast yesterday, he said: “We want to be fair, reasonable and constructive, that’s why we accepted the recommendations of an independent pay body about what fair pay would be.”

But there is a growing sense in Westminster that a government climbdown is inevitable.

And while that may well pave the way for a resolution to the nurses’ dispute, it will be yet another blow to Sunak’s faltering political reputation.