Junior doctors in England will of strike for five consecutive days in September to try to win a new contract. And the BBC suggests there will be five days of strikes each month until Christmas.

Such action will inevitably put patients at risk and the British Medical Association should think again.

The medical profession is in danger of going the same way in public esteem as teaching, and not just because it is allowing the junior members of the profession to decide policy.

Because there has long been a contradiction in the worldview of the teaching unions.

They insist that schools should be run by government, nationally or locally, but are outraged whenever elected politicians propose changing anything.

The BMA is now in danger of adopting the same flawed position.

As far as the junior doctors' dispute is about who runs the NHS, the answer is that it is not them.