As the huge wave of winter strikes grinds on, the government seems to be suffering from the political equivalent of snow blindness. The general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing says she’ll “press pause” on her members’ imminent walkouts if ministers will finally talk about pay, but at the time of writing, the response was still a kind of trite obstinacy: by way of adding insult to injury, Sunday saw the health secretary signalling that although he still won’t get involved in salary negotiations, he may be able to help with free parking for NHS staff. The big fear haunting Rishi Sunak and his colleagues is obvious – if they talk money with the nurses, who will be next? The RMT’s Mick Lynch, who recently called for a one-to-one meeting with the prime minister, knows the answer to that. And so the whole awful drama continues, revealing not just fury and fear at the top, but the government’s collective bafflement.
A maddening thought is clearly rattling around Tory minds: this wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? Over four decades have passed since Margaret Thatcher began her war on organised labour. Six years ago, the newly elected Tory government led by David Cameron passed a Trade Union Act whose stringent new restrictions on strike action looked like the belated conclusion to what she had started. And yet here we are, faced with what the Daily Mail calls a “calendar of chaos”, with the unions suddenly at the centre of the national conversation.
