No wonder Rishi goes private when GPs vote to go home at 5pm

WJUST when Michelle Mone, aka Baroness Bra, thought things couldn’t get worse, after being caught up in an investigation into multi-millionpound PPE contracts, it did. Her post telling people not to ‘believe everything you read’ was applauded by Rebekah Vardy.

E ALREADY face chaos because of strikes planned by rail workers, nurses, civil servants, teachers and postmen. Now, to cap it all, we’re told GPs are demanding they limit their hours to nine to five because longer days discriminate against those with families.

No matter that it is ordinary British families who won’t be able to see their doctor. Nor that the GPs working to rule are already on an average £111,900 salary. Nor that the average wait to see your GP is two weeks.

They now want to cut their hours from the already inadequate 8am to 6.30pm at a time when, in the worst performing surgeries, only one in eight patients is seen face-to-face.

Inevitably, their toxic demands are supported by the hand-wringing Left who cry it’s for the safety of patients. In what world could GPs working fewer hours and seeing fewer patients improve safety for the sick?

Perhaps, as they tidy their desks of an early evening, doctors will console themselves with the thought that they can always pack their charges off to wait 12 hours in A&E.

Yes, many GPs have a big workload. Yet surgeries are seeing fewer patients than they were pre-Covid.

The real problem is that our sacred NHS is systemically broken. It doesn’t require extra billions but root-and-branch reform that puts patients, not workers, first. Work-shy GPs will worsen the crisis.

But with the Left in full cry there really is no hope of reform. This week, the Guardian newspaper gleefully hunted down Rishi Sunak’s private doctor to somehow shame the PM. How pathetic.

Why should any of the eight million people who choose to go private be vilified when they ease the burden on the NHS? As Margaret Thatcher pointed out in 1987, when taunted over her private health insurance, she and millions of others were paying their dues to the NHS even though they weren’t adding to the queue for treatment.

And given that GPs seem intent on making the chance of getting an NHS appointment all but impossible, it would be irresponsible of Rishi not to have a private doctor.

Who wants a poorly PM waiting weeks for a diagnosis or a prescription when he has vital tasks to perform — like stopping union bigots holding the country to ransom.