5 days ago
The militant strike ringleader who now controls the BMA
The militant Corbynista who helped inspire the first doctors' strikes in 40 years is now in charge of the British Medical Association (BMA).
Dr Thomas Dolphin, a consultant anaesthetist in London, beat four other candidates to become chairman of the BMA council last month and will now lead it for at least three years in what is already looking like a painful tenure for Wes Streeting.
Ironically, had things gone the way Dr Dolphin had planned, he would be in the House of Commons alongside the Health Secretary.
But the Labour Party did not shortlist him to run as an MP at last year's general election, and now he faces them instead as agitator-in-chief.
The 47-year-old has a base salary in excess of £126,000 and has spent the past 20 years building on his political ambitions, playing a pivotal role in turning the union into the militant group of strikers that it is today.
He is part of a group of doctors who have 'ideologically captured' the BMA, according to insiders, and been labelled by critics as 'Trots' – a reference to the hard-Left ideals of Leon Trotsky, the Marxist revolutionary.
Last year, Dr Dolphin was responsible for putting forward a motion – that was passed without debate – to reject the independent Cass review into children's transgender healthcare, which had called on the NHS to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children.
More than 1,000 union members signed an open letter in revolt, and around 200 medics quit as a result, insiders claim.
An activist during the days of Jeremy Corbyn, he campaigned alongside John McDonnell, the former shadow chancellor and socialist, and has been the election agent for Dawn Butler, the London MP for Brent East, in the last three elections.
His rise to the top of the BMA has coincided with increasing levels of political activism and dissonance among members.
He has been a critic of the Government and an outspoken member of the union since the days of Tony Blair – when the BMA says doctors were last paid fairly.
In 2007, a young Dr Dolphin championed the BMA's calls for Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary, to resign over a chaotic online application system for junior doctors that resulted in medics not being offered job interviews.
He rose to become chairman of the union's junior doctors' committee and in 2012, supported doctors' first industrial action since the 1970s over pension reforms.
He has been a hardline union activist and advocate of striking as a means to achieve results ever since.
He made media appearances backing a series of junior doctor walkouts in 2016, despite by this point being a consultant and member of the BMA's consultant committee and council.
In 2023, he fronted the senior doctors' own campaign for pay rises, claiming consultants had seen real-terms cuts to pay of 35 per cent since 2010, as they timed strikes to coincide with the junior doctors' walkouts and the Conservative Party conference.
Although now he says, the union is 'non-partisan' and he is in a 'non-partisan role'.
'As in, I don't have any political affiliation as chair of council,' he told the Guardian last week.
He also warned that the 29 per cent rise the junior doctors – now called resident doctors – are demanding is 'non-negotiable' and could mean strikes go on for years.
Mr Streeting has also said that any increase on the 5.4 per cent pay award for 2025-26 was 'off the table', leaving both parties at an impasse.
The Health Secretary said it was 'completely unreasonable' that the doctors would strike having received a 28.9 per cent salary uplift in three years. He is set to meet with the BMA's resident doctors' committee this week to see if there is a way to 'avert' the five-day walkout, which begins at 7am on 25 July.
The rise of Dr Dolphin and like-minded political activists has coincided with the union increasingly alienating itself from the public and other doctors.
Recent polling shows just one in five Britons strongly back the resident doctors' strikes, while senior medics have criticised the walkouts and even quit the union as a result.
Its annual general meeting has attracted criticism for its increasing focus on political issues such as Palestine and Israel, its rejection of the Supreme Court's ruling on what a biological woman is and how single-sex care should be delivered, as well as the anti-Cass motion put forward by Dr Dolphin.
The new chairman has also already written to Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, to criticise the Government's plans to 'restore control to our borders' outlined in the Immigration White Paper.
He said plans to increase the years that people, including doctors, must spend in the UK to obtain settlement status from five to 10 years would 'create unnecessary stress and uncertainty', and that the BMA was also 'deeply concerned' about introducing 'stricter English language requirements for adult dependants including spouses'.
On taking up the role of chairman last month, he told the BMA's 190,000 members: 'The fight to restore doctors' pay and pensions continues, with colleagues across the country furious that the promised 'journey' towards pay restoration that we were promised has already come to a grinding halt.'
With consultants also holding an 'indicative ballot' on industrial action, the upcoming strikes look set to be just the first under Dr Dolphin's reign.
