Tom Dolphin 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️

Doctors take on huge responsibilities from day one, as @tomdolphin.bsky.social set out to Trevor Phillips today.

We’re asking the Government for a credible path to #PayRestoration for resident doctors in England

Great to speak to the new F1 resident doctors at my Trust today about the role of trade unions in correcting the huge power imbalance between employer and employee, and some of the professional work we are doing as well. Most already @bma.org.uk members, but lots of new signups too! ✊

Graduands wearing their BL hoods going into the north entrance of St Paul’s

St Paul’s cathedral central rotunda with graduands and their families taking their seats

The west entrance door to St Paul’s

Honoured to be at the Barts and The London Rites of Passage ceremony 2025 tonight - St Paul’s provides a magnificent backdrop for this key moment in the careers of these new doctors. 🖤🤍

Resident doctors will be striking in England this time next week. I will be joining them on the picket line in support. The Secretary of State can end the dispute if he has the will to do so. @bma.org.uk remain open to further proposals after yesterday’s constructive talks.

“The trouble is the review… avoids the difficult question of how you set that scope, that limit of what PAs can do.”

Responding to the Leng Review, BMA council chair @tomdolphin.bsky.social has spoken to the BBC about doctors’ concerns over patient safety

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc. There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation. There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely. Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time. For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual. As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone. Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism. No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get: The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

Dolphin blamed the five-day strike that tens of thousands of resident doctors plan to stage later this month on Wes Streeting, the health secretary, giving them a 22% pay rise over two years last year but not following it up with an award this year to take account of the 29% claim. He said the disruption that the 120-hour walkout would cause was his fault, not theirs. Dolphin said: “Our expectation was that the [22%] would be the start of a journey that would keep us going until we’d reached the value we had in 2008. So, clearly, the return of value has stopped and now it’s just marching on the spot. And we need to carry on that journey.

BMA council chair @tomdolphin.bsky.social has spoken to the Guardian on why the Government must set out a credible path to pay restoration for resident doctors in England.

Read the article here 👇🔗 www.theguardian.com/society/2025... #PayRestoration

The Distracted Boyfriend meme: the boyfriend “You” is distracted from girlfriend “Strike Locum” by the passing girl “Full Pay Restoration”

Are you a resident thinking about taking a locum shift on a strike day?

Why risk actively undermining the strike, when you could just wait for your back pay from Wes’ pay award (such as it is) to arrive in August? 😇

BMA press release

"The Government and NHS England both state today that the modest [waiting list] improvements we’ve seen so far are down to staff’s hard work. They now need to demonstrate this with more than words and commit to restoring doctors’ pay and value."

Full response: www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce...

Our training takes a long time for a reason. We all wish it could be shorter but short-cuts cut short the education needed to make great diagnosticians, proceduralists and specialists.

Standards are being bypassed in many subtle ways now, and it is bad for the health service.

There is a bigger reckoning to come about doctor substitution in general and the taskification of medicine. The whole of a medical education is truly far greater than the sum of its parts, and this has been devalued and ignored to the detriment of patient care in the long term.

Whatever the report says, we have to make sure that doctor substitution ends, proper scope is set by doctors and training for doctors is prioritised.
The PAs themselves need a way out too; this has been bad for them, sold a pup of a career.

The Leng report is unlikely to be the final chapter in the story of PAs/AAs in the UK. Serial irresponsibility by multiple actors has left us w/ a complex, difficult situation, incl for the PAs/AAs themselves. Unpicking it will take a while; pt safety has to be the guiding light.

The BMA/BMJ crew with placard and a huge banner, in the middle of Piccadilly

The BMA/BMJ crew with placard and a huge banner, waiting on Park Lane to begin the March

What an experience to walk down the parade route between the National Theatre and the British Library groups and be cheered and waved at by thousands upon thousands of people ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤🤍🩷

Vassili Crispi and Tom Dolphin standing in front of some wrought-iron railings, both wearing scrubs with rainbow accessories

Pride is a protest - proud to represent LGBTQ+ doctors and medical students for @bma.org.uk at @PrideInLondon 2025!

Update at 0250: I angered the gods of on-call with my hubris, and have been laid low in punishment for daring to plan something during an on-call…

Great to see all the GPs earlier though - they have big plans to sort out their “local” (ie in their national, single, online employer) contract dispute

You should still post back your ballot if you're a resident doctor in England - it might not make it back to Civica in time but you gotta try, right?

Data for reps, GP collective action, 10 Year Plan, interview for BBC News, more GP collective action, and now off to my on-call...

All organising is local, every conversation counts, every ballot builds our strength.

Have I mentioned yet that you need to put your ballot in the post by Monday at the latest to be sure it's counted?

We need the ballot to succeed, so pop a reminder in your local whatsapp now!

Selfie of Harsha and me, in green scrubs, in the ED office - Harsha is holding up his new BMA lanyard and we’re both smiling like we know we’re going to win this fight

Going round the hospital on my lunch break briefly to remind residents to return their ballots - signed up @BMA.org.uk newest member! Harsha, ED registrar and IMG, has signed up today specifically to join the pay campaign. Welcome to the union! ✊

Yes

1) Residents in England, post your strike ballot back ASAP - and tell your colleagues
2) GPs in N Ireland, find your referendum email and stand up against contract imposition
3) Sign @bma.org.uk's demand for an alternative regulator to the GMC: activism.bma.org.uk/page/172664/...
4) Enjoy the sun! 🌞

First day as Chair of Council @bma.org.uk. Good introductory phone call this evening with Wes Streeting - lots more to discuss in future meetings, but constructive engagement from the Secretary of State on the issues that matter to doctors.

Dr Tom Dolphin, elected chair of council 2025-28. "It's an honour and a privilege to have been elected to lead the nation's doctors at such a pivotal time...I will empower BMA members so that everywhere doctors work, we are there with them, and the exploitation and erosion of our profession is stopped."

Tonight, @tomdolphin.bsky.social has been elected as the new BMA Chair of Council. We offer our congratulations and a warm welcome to the role.
Thank you to @drphilbanfield.bsky.social for his dedication to our members and the medical profession over the past 3 years.
www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-ce...

Can you pls ask why their consultation on new guidelines after the Supreme Court ruling on the defn of a woman presumes we agree with the definition’s premise? It only asks if the wording is clear, not if we agree it’s valid or correct. Presumes it is correct and just needs to be said more clearly!!

Why do so many messaging apps have one-tap video calling? To make an actual phone call requires several taps and can’t easily be done by accident any more. But video calling someone in WhatsApp is very easily done by touching a single button RIGHT NEXT TO other key buttons! It’s just bad UI design

A bee resting on my index finger as it sips from the tiny Beevive sugar water container I’m holding with the same hand

Just rescued another exhausted bee from the footpath and fed it some sugar water from the Beevive keyring I always have with me 🐝❤️

beevive.com

Repeated instance of the words PRIDE MONTH where the letters in the middle become progressively more prominent down the page until it just says DEMON in rainbow colours

A progress pride flag in the shape of a flickering flame, with a scroll banner across the front which says “The first pride was a riot”. The tittle on the I in Pride is a tiny heart.

A rainbow-hued brick with PRIDE WAS A RIOT sprayed on the side facing us

A rainbow-coloured unicorn with a (horse) skull for a head is galloping across a black field with flames rising up where its hooves strike the ground. Around its neck, a banner flies, marked “We called off Pride. Now it’s Gay Wrath Month”

There’s some strong fightback energy in the Pride month memes I’m seeing kicking about this year

I hadn't realised how dependent I was on caffeine until I unintentionally stopped drinking tea completely for a few days, and couldn't work out why I felt so terrible on day 4-5. Quick dose of tea and I felt so much better. May try to cut down again, but in a more controlled way this time..

Big fan of this definition of "white British" that excludes the King

Wes has graciously agreed that PAs should be Physicians Assistants in future. He could have waited until Leng actually reported but clearly had *reasons* to say now, can’t imagine why.

This has no bearing on whether you should Yes to strike action to demand full pay restoration, which you should.