The BMA has turned itself into the 'medical branch of Momentum' trends now

The messages from junior doctors on the social media site Reddit are unambiguous.

'F*** this s*** and more than anything, f*** the NHS,' reads one. For good measure, it throws in a callous reference to record patient waiting times that may have cost a shocking number of lives: 'Don't guilt-trip me with your cancers anymore ... I sincerely deeply hope the whole damn thing collapses.'

Another Reddit user joins in, saying: 'The NHS is drowning, and I would happily hold its head under water until the bubbles stop.' One more replies: 'One could say it's the kinder thing to do.'

It may not be the most representative sample. But the thread of messages on the media site, which is used by militant young members of the British Medical Association, gives a graphic insight into the mindset of some junior doctors as they plan a 96-hour walk-out in England following the Easter bank holiday.

Health leaders have described the planned stoppage, which follows the rejection of doctors' demands for a 35 per cent pay rise, as by far the most disruptive in a wave of industrial action by NHS workers that began in December.

The 35 per cent rise is essential say the doctors, who claim they have had 15 years of real-term pay cuts. But such an absurd increase will never be met. The fact the doctors have cynically chosen their moment, just after a lengthy bank holiday, means that demand for treatment will be sky high before the strike even begins. And it follows a 72-hour strike last month that resulted in the cancellation of 175,000 appointments and operations.

Yet judging by the Reddit messages, certain junior doctors – and particularly those with influence in the BMA – are determined for the suffering to continue. 'We need to cause serious disruption across the service' to punish people, asserts one. Another adds: 'I'm a doctor and I hate the NHS.'

And a further message exclaims: 'REMEMBER – THE DISRUPTION IS THE AIM. This is not just a protest like the nurses strike, we need to cause serious disruption across the service.'

Forget patients' lives, this is part of a nakedly political campaign. Elected officials of the BMA talk openly of their hatred of the Tories and turning the strike into an assault on the Government. Two of the most prominent are Rob Laurenson, 28, a privately educated trainee GP from Kent, and Vivek Trivedi, 30, a trainee anaesthetist.

Both are co-chairmen of the BMA junior doctors committee, both were involved in negotiations with health minister Steve Barclay, both have appeared on TV as spokesmen for the cause and, when asked on Reddit about the strike, both replied in unison: 'Our preference is giving employers the legally required notice of days of action and nothing more. Our preference is a full walkout.'

Intriguingly, Laurenson and Trivedi have a crab symbol as part of their Twitter profiles and reportedly wore crab badges during the negotiations. This was almost certainly to express their solidarity with hard-Left doctors – although some have used crabs on social media as an anti-capitalist symbol.

Daniel Zahedi, a BMA East of England official, told a Stop the War conference in January: 'With talk of a general strike growing louder and louder by the day, I implore co-workers and colleagues to come together, from nurses, midwives, physios, OTEs, paramedics, pharmacists, porters and domestics, to our posties, our firefighters, our railworkers, bus drivers, teachers, university lecturers, dockworkers and everyone in between.

'It's more than about pay, it's about justice.'

It is true that the BMA, the oldest trade union in Britain, has a long history of political unrest. Aneurin Bevan, the Labour architect of the NHS, called the organisation 'politically poisoned' and was fulminating about them just four months before the health service's launch, which the union feared would undermine the role and influence of doctors.

'There has been ...misrepresentation, sustained by a campaign of personal abuse, from a small body of spokesmen who have consistently misled the great profession to which they are supposed to belong,' he said.

'I make a distinction ... between the hard-working doctors who have little or no time to give to these matters, and the small body of raucous-voiced people who are alleged to represent the profession.'

But 75 years on from that Bevan speech, it's clear that sections of the BMA are more militant than ever, having been hijacked by the hard Left.

And the manner in which this has happened is as shocking as it is cynical, with echoes of the way Marxist supporters of Jeremy Corbyn engineered his surprise victory in the 2015 Labour leadership contest and then saw off all attempts to unseat him.

Indeed, many of these entryists into the BMA were members of Momentum, the shadowy political group that was set up to defend Corbyn's leadership.

It was in 2020 that a group of mainly 20-something doctors formed an organisation called Broad Left – the name stems from a Communist Party strategy to 'unite to capture positions within a union' and move it Left to win 'concessions from capitalism and the state'. The outfit's logo is a stethoscope arranged to

read more from dailymail.....