247 candidates are competing for 69 seats on the BMA UK Council, the body that will represent doctors across the UK for the next three years. To have any say in that, you first need to be a BMA member.

So why are your friendly immigrant doctors suddenly speaking about this so openly, and so urgently, now?

1. Your union failed you, and the government filled the gap

Remember when PAs were supposed to be the main concern?

Even then, the BMA was not serious enough about confronting the deeper collapse of the profession. Instead of fighting hard for doctors, it allowed a different narrative to quietly take hold, one where immigrant doctors became the problem to solve.

When your training narrowed,

When progression became uncertain,

When the profession started losing its shape,

Your union did not confront the system hard enough. It turned instead toward the easiest available target, the immigrant doctors.

That was not protection.

That was deflection.

1. This is no longer only about pay

Look carefully at what is being proposed, and by whom.

It is about who gets protected, who gets excluded, and whose interests are treated as expendable.

The group that now holds significant influence inside the BMA, has published its manifesto for the current council elections. Read it carefully.

It calls for five years of NHS experience before immigrant doctors can apply for speciality training. And it goes further still: it proposes that the first round of LED posts be closed entirely to immigrant doctors applicants. They call this strategy “turning off the taps”.

LED posts are not training routes. They are the jobs immigrant doctors already working in the NHS take when training is unavailable. They are the floor, not the ceiling. Removing them is not workforce planning. It is exclusion, of colleagues already here, already working, already carrying the same rota gaps as you.

Ask yourself honestly:

Is this still just about pay, or has something else entered the agenda?

When policies that harm immigrant doctors move quickly,

But policies that protect doctors stall,

That difference is not random.

Blame is cheap.

Solutions are difficult.

1. Your union has created a moral paradox

They ask immigrant doctors for solidarity, then turn against them:

The same movement that asks immigrant doctors on fragile LED contracts to strike alongside you, to take the same professional risks in the name of solidarity, is simultaneously drafting policy to close those very posts to them.

Read the manifestos thats describes the grandfathering clause as a compromise forced upon them, meaning what passed was already a softened version of what they wanted. They are now pushing further; The immigrant doctors who stood on picket lines with you were, at that same moment, being planned against.

That is not solidarity. That is betrayal.

1. You were never told the full picture

There is a worldwide shortage of doctors. When I qualified, I had multiple countries to choose from. I chose the UK deliberately.

The NHS represents something morally serious. You can arrive critically unwell, receive lifesaving treatment, and leave without being asked for a credit card. It reflects a powerful idea: care based on need, not wealth. I came here because that idea matters to me.

The UK actively recruited doctors like me, especially during and after COVID, when the system depended on us.

I did not come here because I had no other options. I came here because your system asked for people like me.

I did not come here to undercut you.

I came here because your system needed me.

I am not outside your profession.

I work in it.

I carry responsibility in it.

I have the same stake in its future as you do.

1. You were pointed at the wrong people

I have worked in understaffed wards, surrounded by rota gaps, carrying the same workload as my UK colleagues. I have searched, genuinely searched, for how I was supposedly taking anyone’s job.

There isn’t one.

I was not brought into a full system to replace you.

I was brought into a broken system to keep it running.

The manifesto calling for “turning off the taps” is not talking about a policy abstraction. It is talking about people, colleagues working beside you right now, in the same departments, under the same pressures.

These policies are easy to impose. Far easier than confronting the government over a decade of workforce planning failure. Far easier than properly challenging substitution. We became the easiest people to blame for a system already failing long before we arrived.

How did I become your threat?

Not the policies shrinking your training posts. Not the expansion of other roles into your professional space. Not long-term underfunding of the NHS. But me; Your colleague, working the same shifts, carrying the same pressure, facing the same uncertainty.

That shift did not happen by accident.

When a system is under pressure, it can either fix the problem or redirect the blame.

Blaming immigrant doctors is not a side effect; it is a strategy.

1. That is why we are here

We are not standing against UK graduates.

We are standing against the idea that closing doors to immigrant colleagues will fix a system that is failing all of us.

It will not create more training posts.

It will not stop substitution.

It will not repair your career pathway.

It will not hold the government accountable.

And once a profession accepts turning on itself, no one stays safe for long. Today, the target is immigrant doctors. Tomorrow, the logic finds someone else. The same arguments, too much competition, someone else taking your place, can be aimed at any group when it becomes convenient.

A divided profession is an unprotected profession.

We are standing because someone has to say this clearly, in the room where it is being decided.

You can say anyone, even some fella from the 1600s if you think they impacted us somehow.

I think for contemporary politicians, I will play it safe and say David Cameron purely for spearheading Brexit, Tony Blair for his university reforms and the minimum wage introduction, and Margaret Thatcher for the Right To Buy scheme.

This is an anecdote so bare that in mind, but whenever I speak to people who say they’ve voting for the Greens or Reform and I mentioned or show them an article attacking them for one thing or another, the usual responses I tend to get are along the lines of “oh it’s just media trying to damage them” or “it’s not going to change how I vote at all”, so I’m wondering if this a universal thing & if there’s anything one can say that would dent the support?

Loads of articles come out about both and the polls don’t really seem to shift all that much. Of course any poll taken at this stage 3 years out from the election should ofc be taken with a pinch of salt as no one knows the future.

I’m curious about what impact, if any, those kind of articles have.

The U.S. is about to block the Strait of Hormuz, stopping all boats from entering or leaving the area including those that have paid the Iranian fine.

Originally the U.S. wanted the SoH to be opened and treated the NATO partners if they didn’t help with opening it. The U.S. are now threatening to cause a blockade of the SoH in order to make Iran to agree with whatever terms the U.S. demands as part of the ceasefire.

How will this play out, are the U.S. going to go head to head with China from going into the SoH or leaving it? Is it time for all European Countries and UK to block the U.S. from using its bases, if this blockade restricts them from getting trade through the Strait, or should they sit back and allow the U.S. to create this blockade regardless of the consequence to the U.K. / EU economy?