Mick Hartley

Nicole Lampert in the Telegraph:

Established in 1832, the BMA’s motto is “to promote the medical and allied sciences, and to maintain the honour and interests of the medical profession”. There have been a few controversies along the way – a flirtation with eugenics in the early 20th century and an early rebellion against the plans for the NHS – but for the past few decades the BMA was decidedly “very small-‘c’ conservative” in the words of Emma Runswick, its deputy chair.

Thanks to Runswick and some of her friends, that is no longer the case. In recent years, what is known as the “omnicause” of far-Left issues – trans, Palestine, eco protests – have come to dominate the union, which was last week accused of “extortion” for staging a five-day strike aimed at securing a 29 per cent pay rise for resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors.

I'm not sure how important the eco stuff is now. The Greens certainly seem to have given it up in favour of gender ideology, and the new-look Greta Thunberg is full on Free Palestine. The rebrand of Just Stop Oil to Just Stop Zionism can only be a matter of time.

The origins of the transformation stretch back to 2020, when a grouping of Corbynite doctors within the union formed the Broad Left coalition. The name stems from a Communist Party strategy to “capture positions within a union” and take it over. Its logo is a stethoscope arranged to look like a hammer and sickle.

By 2022, the coalition seemed to have increasingly joined hands with a larger group of young activist doctors called DoctorsVote – which is mainly dedicated to winning massive pay rises for resident doctors.

And in the spring of that year, the two groups combined to seize dozens of seats on the BMA council, the union’s foremost decision-making body. In a vote to determine the makeup of the council for the following four years, Broad Left/DoctorsVote candidates secured 26 of the 69 places up for grabs.

Since then, their influence has only grown. Indeed, a 2023 Policy Exchange report – “Professionalism is not relevant” – concluded the union had been “taken over by young, self-declared ‘entryists’ in a planned campaign similar to that [orchestrated] in the Labour Party at the time of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership”.

“It is very sad to see what was basically a well-rounded organisation that covered so many issues of importance to a wide range of doctors being hollowed out by the angry activism around residents’ pay, Gaza and LGBT issues,” says Mark Pickering of the Christian Medical Fellowship, which counts many BMA members in its ranks. “It is very similar to the way Momentum took over the Labour Party from the inside. We saw then how people started using democracy to try to dismantle democracy and that’s what it seems has happened here.

“You had these two groups come in and they all vote for each other… and that’s shifted what happens at the annual meetings, where BMA policy is formed.”

As the union has become ever more of a crucible for Left-wing politics, members appalled by the takeover have begun to leave.

Notably, and unsurprisingly, Jewish doctors. While opposition to the Cass Review was also part of the exciting new BMA look. All part of the omnicause.

It's not just the BMA. The Royal College of Nursing has turned its back on Sandie Peggie. As I noted the other day, it's interesting, given the obvious class element in the NHS Fife case, that not one single trades union that I'm aware of would support Peggie here. And certainly not the RCN. They're all completely behind the gender cause. Such an obvious case of workers' rights under attack from middle-class management, and they all look the other way.

Also this: a nurse racially abused by a trans paedophile, and the RCN's only concern is that she "misgendered" him. 

BREAKING: Jennifer Melle, suspended for whistleblowing how she was disciplined for indirectly ‘misgendering’ a transgender paedophile patient, has accused the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) of abandoning her during the most traumatic period of her life.

Jennifer was racially… pic.twitter.com/wDkUXsYKgX

— Christian Concern (@CConcern) August 3, 2025

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

"Jennifer was racially abused by the patient and threatened with assault. But it is now Jennifer who has been suspended and is being investigated as a 'risk' to the NHS for not using the patient's preferred gender identity.

"A paying RCN member for 12 years, Jennifer says that when the incident happened the union dismissed her case as not “meritorious” and told her to complete a “reflection” exercise to avoid future ‘misgendering’. She received no support despite the RCN recognising the abuse she experienced."