JP Morgan money strike sees Labour bow down to it

Banking giant JP Morgan has gone on a capital strike (withholding investment). Following this, Labour has been quick to offer an 100% discount on the bank’s business rates, spread out over “a period of years”.

At the same time, doctors have been on a workers’ strike for pay restoration and job security. It appears that, when it comes to workers, Labour suddenly find the will to say no.

The Capital party?

If ‘Labour’ rebranded as ‘Capital’, we probably wouldn’t consider it an April Fool’s Day joke. As well as JP Morgan, pharmaceutical giants have been demanding that the NHS pay them more, or they will withhold investment. Labour agreed to a 25% increase in payments for essential drugs in December 2025.

Meanwhile, resident doctors are asking for real-terms pay restoration to 2008 levels, at 21%. The government is offering a 7.1% increase partly because it disputes the doctors’ use of the Retail Price Index (RPI) to calculate inflation. Apparently, RPI is good enough for calculating increases in student debt, rent and corporate pricing. However, it isn’t sufficient for a doctor’s pay.

Another part of the dispute is specialist doctor posts in the NHS. The government is proposing to increase them from 1,000 to around 4,000. The thing is, the number of specialist applications is projected to exceed 40,000 this year.

Overall, the UK is low on doctors per 1,000 people at 3.2. Some of the highest per capita doctor levels are in Austria (5.48) and Germany (4.53).

48-hour deadline (not for JP Morgan, of course)

Labour has given resident doctors 48 hours to accept the deal. The British Medical Association (BMA) rejected the offer without putting it to a member vote.

The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, Dr Jack Fletcher, has said:

We’ve been willing and have been talking constructively for the last two months and at the very last minute the government has shifted the goalposts of the pay offer. I am very happy and willing to sit down and talk constructively once again.

He further responded to withholding a members vote on the pay and jobs offer:

We discussed this with our committee who are elected to represent our members. Their representatives have considered this offer. We don’t think it goes far enough on pay so we decided not to put this to our members.​

While members should decide if they accept the offer, the government goes far too easy on capital like JP Morgan compared to workers. That’s an affront to how the Labour party was founded.

Featured image via the Canary