Left-winger spoiling for a fight with the Tories

THE junior doctor leading the latest round of strikes fumed that she had been ‘betrayed’ when plans for the walkouts were revealed.

Left-winger Ellen McCourt ranted that the leak to the Daily Mail had put the plans for action at risk.

The Mail revealed earlier this week that junior doctors were planning to escalate their strikes – and that their own risk assessment warned the walkouts could pose a ‘serious’ health danger for some patients. Dr McCourt, 32, unleashed her anger on Facebook, writing: ‘Someone continues to betray our trust, put their own agenda first and risk our collective action.’

She insists her work with the British Medical Association is apolitical but has described the Government’s planned imposition of the new contracts as ‘extremely disappointing’ and warned it was ‘storing up problems for the future’.

She has warned she will not back down, saying that ‘junior doctors have found their voice’ and: ‘We’ve not finished yet.’ Earlier this year she reacted angrily to criticism of junior doctors, saying : ‘We are all angry. We have been for a long time. I have looked Jeremy Hunt in the eye and explained our frustrations, our anger, our rejection.’

Originally from Newcastle upon Tyne, Dr McCourt graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2006 and has been a junior doctor for seven years. Now in emergency medicine in Hull, she works some weekends, including 13-hour shifts on Saturdays and Sundays.

Dr McCourt, whose mother Kathleen was awarded a CBE for services to nursing in 2012, describes herself as ‘Left-leaning’. She says that after experiencing long hours and under-staffing three years ago she decided to ‘stop just being angry and moaning about everything and try to change things’.