An hour or so after the British Medical Association announced strike dates for October, November and December, I was in Downing Street when Philip Hammond emerged from the front door of No. 11.

"What are your going to do about the pesky junior doctors?" I asked him cheekily.

"Not my department," the Chancellor replied breezily, before turning on his heels and disappearing through the gate at the far end of the street, clutching his red box.

It would be unfair to say that the embattled Jeremy Hunt lacks support from Cabinet colleagues as he prepares for yet more hand-to-hand combat with the increasingly militant junior doctors.

The Prime Minister, when she broke her silence on the latest strike threat, did give her Health Secretary pretty solid backing when she accused the BMA of playing politics.


But she did then have to correct herself after beginning her declaration of support by saying: "Jeremy has been an excellent Health Secretary…"

Has been?

She immediately realised her mistake and quickly said: "He is an excellent Health Secretary..."

But there's no doubt that there is some frustration among Conservative MPs - including ministers - about just how long this dispute has dragged on.

The first strike, after all, was back in January. And if the BMA carries out its new threat, the strikes will have been going on throughout the whole of 2016.

Prime Minister Theresa May may have backed Mr Hunt publicly during her visit to a car plant in the West Midlands, but after a chairing a Cabinet committee on social reform - which the Health Secretary had been expected to attend - Mr Hunt was seen arriving at No 10, apparently for a meeting with the PM.

A crisis meeting? Well, there was a meeting and the junior doctors' dispute is fast becoming a political crisis. So in that sense it could have been a crisis meeting.

Not so, of course, according to Mr Hunt and his allies. "A regular planning meeting, nothing to do with the strikes," a Department of Health source claimed, in what must rank as the quote of the day.

When I repeated this to a senior Conservative MP who had just been in No 10 for another meeting, he roared with laughter, though he insisted the doctors' dispute wasn't a crisis - yet!

Several hours later, a Department of Health source contacted Sky News again and rejected suggestions that Mr Hunt had missed the social reform meeting - he presented on mental health, the source said - and said the second meeting 'wasn't with the PM'.

Mr Hunt's officials aren't denying, however, that he and the PM discussed the doctors' strike during the day.

Has Mr Hunt handled the dispute badly? His critics in the BMA and the Labour Party claim he has, of course.

But was it wise for him to be so macho after the ballot in July threw out the deal reached in May and announce that he would impose the new contracts in October? With hindsight, it looks like a clumsy move that has backfired.

Labour's Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott, a Corbyn loyalist and devotee, has accused the Government of treating the junior doctors like "the enemy within" - the phrase Margaret Thatcher provocatively used to describe the miners in the 1984-85 strike led by Arthur Scargill.

The new junior doctors' leader, Ellen McCourt, may be more militant than her predecessor, Johann Malawana, who quit after the July ballot. But she is hardly an Arthur Scargill.

And are the junior doctors like miners? Hardly. Most look and sound like the sons and daughters of middle class Tories from the shires.

Which is one reason why Jeremy Hunt should be wary.

The Prime Minister on the other hand, will be wary about being seen to show any sign of weakness so soon into her time in Downing Street.

The junior doctors may not be the Chancellor's "department", as he put it - yet, unless he suddenly has to find some money to buy them off.

But every aspect of government is the Prime Minister's "department". And the battle with the junior doctors is Theresa May's first big test.