A senior doctor behind NHS strike action appeared to refer to Brexit voters as racist and accused the Conservatives of ‘enabling pond life’.
Mike Henley, the deputy chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, made the remarks as part of a debate on Twitter.
He wrote: ‘In the same way that Brexit enabled racists, the Tory leadership contenders falling over themselves to “wage war on woke” is enabling another section of pond life.’
He also said the UK had been ‘manipulated into Brexit by Russian influence and money to destabilise Europe’.
Tory MP Ben Bradley called the Derby-based surgeon’s comments ‘utterly disgraceful’.
A senior doctor behind NHS strike action appeared to refer to Brexit voters as racist and accused the Conservatives of ‘enabling pond life’
Fellow Tory Paul Bristow, who sits on the Commons health committee, accused the BMA of being ‘more interested in knocking the Government than getting a fair and reasonable pay award’.
He told The Sun: ‘They should call off the strike, negotiate in good faith and prioritise patient care.’ It comes after consultants on an average NHS income of £128,000 voted to strike for a 35 per cent pay rise.
They will walk out in England on July 20 and 21. Junior doctors are holding strikes from July 13 to 18, in the longest walkout in the history of the NHS.
The BMA claimed Dr Henley’s comments, made last year, were not calling Brexit voters racist or saying Tories were ‘pond life’.
It said its focus was on fixing pay and ‘not being diverted to discussing personal and often historic activity on social media sites’.
A junior doctor was kicked off the BMA’s junior’s doctor’s committee after the Mail revealed earlier this year that he had make sick jokes about gassing jews on Twitter.
Dr Martin Whyte, a paediatrician who works for the NHS in the North East of England, also made jibes about the ‘decomposing carcass of the Queen’ and called Conservatives ‘b****rds’.