All union leaders know that the hardest thing isn’t taking members out on strike, it’s taking them out again after they have gone back to work. Patience is a crucial part of leadership, as is transmitting that to your members. Central to succeeding is having a clear, easy to understand and simply expressed strategy. The British Medical Association leadership now faces the imposition of a junior doctors contract that their members still reject. How they respond to the health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s unilateral action and what steps they take next are critical. There are a number of principles they should respect over the coming months.

First, they need to stay reasonable – this is a battle for public opinion, and the route to victory is to remain the most trusted voice. They have two inbuilt advantages. On the one hand, women in white coats are trusted when they speak on health over male politicians in suits. On the other, Hunt has ended negotiations and said he will impose the contract.

The health secretary says this is urgent, though the contract has been four years in negotiation and will not come into force until August. The government hopes to use this delay in implementation to its advantage. It believes voters will get bored with the issue and that the media will stop reporting on it as other issues – the EU referendum, Trident, the Tory leadership – offer better and newer copy.

This leads to the second principle – repetition. This is about fairness and safety. Junior doctors are the backbone of the health service and they want fair treatment. The case is simply put. Hunt wants more hours to be worked, more cover to be provided, and all for the same money – it doesn’t add up. Someone is losing out, and when the secretary of state brazenly defends the deal on the basis that three out of four doctors do better, that means at least one in four does worse.

No one would be happy for a pay deal like that at their workplace. Wages have to be fair. Conditions have to be fair. Negotiations have to be fair. The imposition of a contract – for the first time in NHS history – simply isn’t fair. And you can tell from the government’s handling that it knows that to be true. The BMA needs to punch this home – it’s time to take its message to the public through a massive advertising campaign.

If Hunt wants the issue to go away, junior doctors need it to be everywhere. And the BMA needs to confront the way Hunt has played fast and loose with the facts. He knows excess and avoidable deaths are very different things. He knows there is no evidence that junior doctor rostering is the cause of excess deaths for weekend admissions to acute hospitals. But he doesn’t care.

Hunt is happy repeating the mantras “11,000 deaths … seven-day NHS … patient safety”. But the public trust the junior doctors. The BMA needs to consolidate its ownership of patient safety – again with an advertising campaign.

Third, this is a long game. Hunt wants to encourage a “drift back to work”. An imposition announced in February but delayed until August allows the dispute to go off the boil and for individual doctors to give up on the fight – accepting the inevitability of Hunt’s deal. But there was an unprecedented 98% support in the ballot.

The BMA could withdraw goodwill and work to rule. Better by far to find innovative ways of refreshing and renewing solidarity. Why not use the next six months to set up an agency – perhaps a not for profit co-op – that could provide services to the NHS? Junior doctors could resign en masse to join that rather than accept the new contract. Then the BMA could sell services back to the NHS on the terms it wants.

Imposing a contract has the appearance of strength but reveals a position of weakness. A united BMA with clear messages and clever strategy can exploit that weakness. And win.