When I read in the Daily Mail yesterday that the British Medical Association is to ballot its members on industrial action – at a time of growing concern over the number of new Covid cases and a seemingly stalled vaccination programme – I was shocked.
But I can’t say that I was surprised.
It brought back memories of why I quit the BMA a decade ago because of its skewed priorities, lack of concern for my profession, and lack of concern.
Indeed, the very use of the word ‘Association’ artfully conceals the fact that the BMA is a powerful and reactionary trade union, with an outlook better suited to a 1970s car factory than to representing the medical profession in the 21st century.

The British Medical Association instructed all 6,600 GP offices to ignore Sajid Javid, Health Secretary,’s nine-point plan.
The majority of NHS workers tend to be on the Left, but the BMA, which is a hardline socialist organization with militant Trotskyist tendencies, is my opinion a hardline socialist organization.
They would love to incite industrial action against a Tory government!
The BMA doesn’t care that we are still in the throes of a pandemic or that almost five million people who are eligible for booster jabs still haven’t got them.
It doesn’t even care that millions of patients can’t get the face-to–face appointments they desire with their GPs.
On Thursday, the BMA instructed all 6,600 GP practices to defy Health Secretary Sajid Javid’s nine-point package – launched earlier this month after a campaign by the Mail – which aims to get patients back into surgeries to see their doctors.

Angus Dalgleish, a professor of oncology in a London teaching hospital, is
The BMA’s GP committee also backs industrial action over two issues: the administration of medical exemptions for people who cannot get vaccinated, which – doctors say – adds to their workload, and ‘pay transparency’, which requires GPs earning over £150,000 to declare their income.
It states that the latter measure will increase hostility toward GPs. I can understand their logic.
Although the BMA doesn’t want you to know, most GPs are very well compensated.
This is due to bungled contract reforms under the Blair government which pushed up incomes while simultaneously removing GPs’ obligations to see patients out-of-hours and at weekends, or make home visits.
This irreparably damaged the relationship between doctor-patient. This industrial action would be catastrophic for my profession and the future of general medicine.
Let us be honest and say that GPs’ reaction to the Covid pandemic has been mixed. There was a shortage of doctors before the outbreak and many GPs were required to fill in for their sick colleagues.

Launched earlier this month after a campaign by the Mail, Health Secretary Sajid Javid started his nine-point package which aims to get patients back into surgeries to see their doctors
Too many of them took the opportunity to close their practices and retreat to their computers at home.
Yes, the doctor will see you now – but only on Zoom.
Before the pandemic, 81% of appointments were made in person. This number has fallen to 57%.
A close friend of mine recently developed symptoms that could indicate a serious neurological problem.
He called to make an appointment and was offered a consultation by phone three weeks later.

From April 16 to Oct 18 this year, the UK has seen 560,251 hospitalizations
He paid for a private GP to arrange the appropriate medication.
My friend would not have waited the three weeks he did. The disease would have advanced to the point that he could have been in a wheelchair by now.
I have heard many stories like these, and so has the public. They are rightly mad.
They see workers on the front line – in hospitals, retail and on public transport – and wonder how GPs on six-figure salaries, and with pensions most people can only dream of, can possibly justify taking industrial action.
The BMA is correct when it says doctors are overwhelmed by bureaucracy. But those of us who have the privilege to practice medicine have a solemn obligation to rise above these frustrations.
For well-paid doctors to even call for industrial action during an ongoing health emergency is a self-destructive error – and one that the public may never forgive.
Angus Dalgleish is a professor in oncology at a London teaching hospitals.