Labour Thought the NHS Would Stay Quiet on Palestine. They Were Wrong.

Right, so you look at what the government’s doing to the NHS and you have to laugh, because if they were trying any harder to prove the Forde Report right they’d invoice themselves for the labour. They’ve decided the health service isn’t creaking because of understaffing or collapsing infrastructure — oh no, the real emergency is that too many nurses have opinions the government doesn’t approve of. So now the Department for Health and Social Care is rolling out a racism policy that somehow manages to mention antisemitism 28 times and Palestinians not once, while turning mandatory training into a political obedience test. Doctors in Unite have called it exactly what it is: a top-down attempt to hard-wire a hierarchy of racism into the NHS to silence Palestine solidarity. And once you see it, you realise the repression isn’t accidental — Labour have literally made it policy.
Right, so Labour are taking a system that’s already buckling under pressure, a workforce that’s been brutalised for years, and instead of fixing anything, instead of dealing with pay, safety, retention or the collapsing estate, putting patients first like the staff in the NHS do, they’ve decided the real priority is to criminalise a colour scheme and turn a workplace code of conduct into a foreign-policy enforcement mechanism. And it only makes sense once you accept the central fact that Doctors in Unite are laying out in painful detail: that this isn’t about antisemitism in the NHS, it’s about shutting down Palestine solidarity among the one group of workers whose voices the government cannot afford to let the public hear. Because health workers describing what’s happening to hospitals in Gaza is one of the few things that cuts through the noise, and the government knows it.
So the Department of Health and Social Care puts out a statement on 16 October talking about “urgent action” to tackle antisemitism and “other forms of racism” in the NHS, and you can see the hierarchy right there. Antisemitism gets 28 mentions. Islamophobia gets two. Palestinians aren’t mentioned at all. The “other forms of racism” catch-all is thrown in like a legal obligation, as if racism is an administrative category rather than something people actually live through. And you don’t need a political science degree to work out what’s going on: the government hasn’t learned from the Forde Report — it’s proving it. The same hierarchy of racism the report exposed inside Labour is now being reproduced across the NHS, not through reflection but through denial, because the leadership still pretends that hierarchy never existed. It’s almost impressive, in a cynical way, how quickly they’ve moved from “we deny the hierarchy exists” to “we are now operationalising the hierarchy across the entire NHS workforce”.
And the telling part is that the government didn’t even bother to consult anyone who might be impacted by this. Not staff. Not unions. Not Palestinians. Not Muslims. Not Arabs. Not the communities actually facing the bulk of racist abuse in Britain over the last two years. Instead, they asked four pro-Zionist groups to effectively sign off on turning the NHS into an ideological test site. And when you see the fingerprints of Lord John Mann pressed right across it, the same Lord Mann who has spent years saying anti-Zionism is antisemitic, who calls antisemitism “the worst of racisms”, and who insists the IHRA definition is the only definition that matters, the agenda becomes unmistakable.
And yes, it matters that Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer have taken substantial pro-Israel donations over the years, because it speaks to political incentives, not some grand conspiracy. You don’t need to imagine a secret meeting. The incentives are baked in. The party leadership has tied itself publicly and financially to a political faction that insists criticism of Israel must be policed. So of course the policy infrastructure reflects that. Of course the government line bends to accommodate those relationships. That isn’t speculation — that’s basic political mechanics. When a government decides to ignore professional bodies, unions, staff networks, human rights groups, and the courts, and instead moves in lockstep with donors and lobbyists, you’re not supposed to treat that as normal. You’re supposed to ask: why is this happening, and who benefits?
Doctors in Unite have called it exactly as they see it. Look at who the policy elevates, who it ignores, and who it punishes, and the shape of this thing becomes impossible to miss. The government keeps insisting this is about tackling racism, but every operational detail points somewhere else entirely — towards restricting what NHS staff can say, show, or even feel about Palestine. But the documents lay it out: they’re about to impose the IHRA definition, the same definition that was partially defanged in the High Court because several examples violate protected political expression. They’re planning “enhanced” antisemitism training that will be tied to statutory and mandatory competencies, meaning you can fail your professional obligations unless you affirm what is essentially a political doctrine. And then they’re issuing workwear guidance to ban Palestinian colours, symbols, jewellery, lanyards, screensavers, watermelon patterns — anything that could be construed as solidarity. Meanwhile the DHSC flew the Israeli flag from its building. The neutrality line is a joke and everyone can see it.
And this is where the deeper dishonesty comes in. If the NHS had an antisemitism crisis, if the data showed a runaway surge in incidents inside the service that required emergency intervention, the government would be shouting the numbers from the rooftops. They would be on every broadcast outlet waving spreadsheets telling you this is why they need to crack down. But what we actually see is something completely different: the government making hysterical claims about antisemitism “flourishing” and being “out of control” without any evidence to support that, while ignoring every documented incident of Islamophobic or anti-Arab racism in the same period. So you realise the numbers don’t exist, because the crisis doesn’t exist, because the policy isn’t designed to solve a problem inside the NHS. It’s designed to suppress a narrative the government cannot control.
And the moment you bring Gaza into the frame, everything snaps into place. Because British health workers have been going to Gaza. They’ve been working in those hospitals. They’ve been describing the injuries, the starvation, the amputations without anaesthetic, the systematic targeting of medical infrastructure. They’ve come home and told the truth on camera. And that truth makes the government’s position untenable. It makes the government’s arms sales indefensible. It makes the political alliance with Israel impossible to justify in public. And when Streeting orders NHS staff not to wear scrubs to protests, when pro-Israel groups doxx doctors and nurses, when managers start suspending Palestinian nurses for watermelon socks, you’re not looking at a coincidence. You’re looking at a coordinated incentive structure where the state and its ideological allies all want the same outcome: silence. All of these examples come directly from the public statement issued by Doctors in Unite and the organisations endorsing it.
So this isn’t just censorship. It’s a purge. That word matters because it describes the scale of what’s happening: dozens if not hundreds of staff already disciplined, suspended, interrogated, escorted off premises, told they are a “threat” to colleagues for mentioning a lunchtime protest. And not one of these cases involves concerns about patient care. Not one. Which tells you the purpose is political, not professional. They’re removing people because of their identity or their solidarity with their own people, not because of their competence as medics. And you only need one eye open to see the racialised pattern in who’s being targeted. Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, racialised staff. Exactly the groups erased from the government press release.
And the cruelty is the point. You hear Palestinian clinicians describe losing family members, seeing their communities destroyed in real time, barely being able to sleep, and then going into work where they’re told they can’t wear a badge because it might “offend” someone. But somehow flying the Israeli flag from the DHSC is fine. Somehow the Ukrainian flag on hospital walls was fine. Somehow “neutrality” only kicks in when the solidarity flows towards Palestinians. And when staff point out the double standard, the Trusts go silent, because there is no neutral explanation. The policy only makes sense as discrimination.
The legal side makes this even more absurd. The government hasn’t consulted staff. They haven’t consulted unions. They haven’t done an Equality Impact Assessment. They haven’t followed the Health and Safety Consultation with Employees Regulations. So they’re trying to force through a high-risk, high-impact cultural and legal transformation across 1.5 million workers without meeting the most basic statutory requirements. And that’s before you reach the human-rights angle. Article 10 still exists. Freedom of expression still exists. And the High Court has already told the state, in black and white, that political criticism of Israel is protected expression. So if they enforce this policy as written, they will eventually lose. It’s not a question of if — it’s when.
But the government is counting on fear. They’re counting on the fact that an NHS worker can’t wait two years for a tribunal. They know that being suspended destroys people financially. They know regulators move slowly. They know Trusts can get away with outrageous behaviour because most people don’t have the time, the union backing or the legal support to push back. And that’s why Doctors in Unite stepping forward matters so much. Because they’re calling the policy what it is: authoritarian, racist, discriminatory, and politically driven. And they’re saying it plainly: this is an attack on workers, on rights, on the entire culture of the NHS, designed to force everyone into silence while the government backs a genocide.
Once you step into the mechanics of this policy, you can see exactly how each component is designed to brace the others. You start with the IHRA definition. It looks harmless to someone who’s never had to navigate the internal politics of a public institution, because it’s framed as a tool against racism, and nobody in the NHS is going to stand up and argue in favour of racism. But the definition is written in such a way that its examples swallow its meaning. It doesn’t define antisemitism; it defines disloyalty to Israel. And the High Court has already said as much by refusing to interpret its examples as presumptively antisemitic. So when the government insists this definition must now be inserted into every staff handbook, every HR policy, every disciplinary rubric, they’re not fighting antisemitism. They’re installing a political doctrine that ties your professionalism to your willingness to accept the ideology of a foreign state.
And the reason this matters inside the NHS is because of how employment law works. It’s one thing to say someone has breached a policy. It’s another to embed that policy inside mandatory competencies. That’s the masterstroke here, if you want to call it that. Because once the DHSC says the new antisemitism training is aligned to statutory and mandatory competencies, the stakes change entirely. You’re not just disagreeing with a policy. You’re failing a required element of your job. And failing mandatory training has real consequences: blocked pay progression, disciplinary action, dismissal, even deregistration. They’re turning a political viewpoint into a professional obligation, and calling it anti-racism.
And you can see the contempt built into it too, because they know exactly what they’re doing. They know that the BMA voted overwhelmingly that criticism of Israel is not inherently antisemitic. They know the High Court has said political criticism of Israel is protected speech. They know Palestinian, Muslim and Arab workers are facing unprecedented levels of racism, including at work. They know none of this policy addresses any of that. And they know they haven’t followed the legally required consultation procedures. They’re not trying to fix racism in the NHS. They’re trying to create a bureaucracy that punishes dissent.
The uniform ban is the clearest example. When managers start telling staff that a watermelon on a screen saver is “perceived as antisemitic”, that wearing a lanyard in Palestinian colours is a disciplinary matter, that socks with a green stripe are a threat to safety, you’ve left the realm of policy and entered the realm of farce. And yet people are being suspended for these things. Off the premises. Escorted out. Told they’re a threat. And none of it is about clinical conduct. If anything, the real clinical risk is created by removing staff from wards in the first place. You lose continuity of care, you increase pressure on colleagues, you destabilise teams, and you traumatise the person you’ve removed. And this is happening in a system that can’t fill rota gaps, can’t retain staff, can’t meet demand. They’re harming patients here, to silence staff.
And when you follow the logic of the “no political symbols” line, you hit the absurdity straight away. Because if neutrality is the standard, then the DHSC flying the Israeli flag breached that standard. The Ukrainian flags breached that standard. Donations of equipment to Ukraine breached that standard. Public statements of solidarity breached that standard. And yet none of those were treated as breaches. So the rule is not about neutrality. It’s about state alignment. You can show support for whoever the British government supports. You cannot show support for whoever the British government helps oppress. That’s the rule, and they don’t even pretend otherwise.
And here’s the part that hits the hardest: this isn’t just about symbolism. It’s about identity. When a Palestinian clinician can’t wear their own cultural colours to work without fear, that’s identity erasure. When a Muslim colleague is interrogated for expressing grief, that’s cultural suppression. When solidarity with colleagues being killed in Gaza is labelled extremism, that’s political silencing. And when all of this happens in the same breath that the government claims to be tackling racism, you realise the racism they are tackling is the racism that confronts their political priorities, not the racism that confronts actual people.
The psychological harm is real. You can hear it in the testimonies. Palestinian staff describing being interrogated after hearing their families bombed. Workers talking about being ambushed in corridors by managers demanding explanations. Nurses saying they’re terrified to speak in case they’re accused of misconduct. Staff taking months off sick because the stress is unbearable. Doctors leaving the NHS because they cannot live under constant suspicion. And none of this is an accident. Fear is a feature. A workforce afraid to speak is a workforce easy to control.
And the deeper context is the government’s political collapse over Gaza. They’re trapped between their public allegiance to Israel and the political cost of that allegiance, and the NHS is collateral. Because the one thing the government cannot have is a health workforce — trusted, respected, morally grounded — standing in front of the country saying they’ve seen genocide with their own eyes. They can deal with activists. They can deal with students. They can deal with judges. They can deal with journalists. But they cannot deal with nurses describing starving children. They cannot deal with surgeons describing amputations without anaesthetic. They cannot deal with paramedics describing whole families dug from rubble. Health workers are the one group whose testimony cuts through all the propaganda, and that is why they are being targeted.
Doctors in Unite are right to call this a purge. It fits the word. You don’t suspend people for badges in a functioning democracy. You don’t ban colours. You don’t turn training modules into ideological vetting. You don’t silence grieving staff. You don’t ignore your consultation duties. You don’t weaponise HR to police political dissent. And you certainly don’t claim this is anti-racism while rolling out a form of racism the Forde Report already exposed inside your own political party, that you still haven’t acted upon.
And the consequences are predictable. You create fear. You create resentment. You create inequality. You create a workplace where Palestinians are told their feelings don’t matter, where Muslims are told their safety is secondary, where Jewish anti-Zionists are erased, where speech is policed based on political convenience. And the people who suffer are the same people already carrying the NHS on their backs.
The government will push this as far as they think they can. But the legal ground beneath their feet is weak. They’ve sidestepped mandatory consultation. They’ve ignored equality law. They’re breaching Article 10. They’re imposing a definition already curtailed by the High Court. They’re embedding a political doctrine into mandatory training. And they’re discriminating based on identity and political belief. This is challengeable. It will be challenged. And they will lose.
Because the truth is simple: the NHS is not antisemitic. The data shows no such crisis. The crisis is political. The crisis is the government’s defence of a state committing atrocities. And the crackdown inside the NHS is not about protecting Jewish staff; it’s about protecting the government’s foreign policy from the moral authority of health workers.
So you come to the unavoidable conclusion, the one Doctors in Unite have spelled out clearly: the government is driving a hierarchy of racism into the NHS to silence Palestine support, and they’re willing to break law, break trust and break people to get there.
Turning on workers is hardly new for this government of course they’ve done it again in this weeks budget of course too, hammering earners to excuse the rich as ever, but the scale of it might not have been immediately obvious, so get all the details of that story here.
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