I know we’re meant to be raging at rail workers but I’m struggling. I don’t buy the line that they’re all greedy so-and-sos who are about to enter the rich list by driving trains. By the way, if I’m travelling on a high-speed train, I want my driver to be skilled and experienced — and that means being paid properly.
It’s not actually drivers who are striking, but they are being demonised. I read a moving Twitter thread about suicides on the train tracks, and it was a reminder of the pressure that train drivers can be under and the terrible tragedies they often have to witness. Ahh. But what about the nurses who earn less? They see terrible things too. Yes, they do, and guess what? They deserve a pay rise too. And teachers. And anyone who is struggling.
And I’m not the only one. It wasn’t so long ago that Boris Johnson defied political gravity by convincing working-class people who had voted Labour all their lives to back him. And I can see why. He offered a compelling vision of a post-Brexit Britain. Enough of poverty pay. Enough of all those pesky immigrants undercutting pay and conditions.
Finally, here was a political leader who was going to stand up for the ordinary working man and woman and offer a high-wage economy and something about levelling-up. Sounds good, right?
Cut to double-digit inflation, the cost of food and fuel going through the roof, rising interest rates and record tax hikes. Cut to a society in which nurses and police officers are using food banks. I cannot blame people who are working hard, but simply cannot keep up with the cost of living. What happened to caring about workers, pay and conditions? When P&O sacked all its staff, Conservative MPs were up in arms. Yet they now seem happy to throw workers under the bus — assuming they aren’t on strike too. Blue-collar Conservatism has suddenly switched from solidarity with workers to a high-handed order to suck it up losers. We’re all in it together.
Except we’re not. Tory donors just paid £120,000 to have dinner with Johnson, Theresa May and David Cameron — the worst Come Dine With Me episode ever. Downing Street has asked ministers to ease curbs on City bosses’ pay while their bonuses are rising six times faster than wages, according to the TUC. Lucky for some.
So forgive me if I can’t get angry at people trying to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. And forgive me if I can’t get angry at trade unions. They are allowed to exist in a democracy. I think many people would quite like the RMT’s bald-headed firecracker Mick Lynch fighting their corner.
And there’s little point blaming Labour, which is so terrified of being associated with trade unions it has spiralled into an existential crisis. Forget the blame-game gutter politics, there will be no winners from this terrible set of circumstances, because yawning inequality and economic misery can lead to tragic, dark events which scar individuals, families and society for generations. We should be very nervous about what lies ahead.
In other news...
On Monday evening I went to my first gig since before the pandemic. I was nervous. Not of catching Covid but about how my lower back would cope with standing up for three hours. Luckily, I wasn’t the only audience member of a certain age at the Brixton Academy to see Jacob Collier, above, although there were a lot of young people, which makes sense because the music is very jazz for millennials.
Collier is an incredible performer who radiates positivity and talent — basically, the opposite of our political leaders. He has won five Grammy awards and he’s only 27.
It’s just rude to be that successful. He also had a very engaging manner and managed to get 6,000 people to listen to him in pin-drop silence and then turned us into an impromptu choir. As I stood there with these strangers all singing our hearts out and smiling inanely at each other, I remembered the raw joy of live gigs and shared human moments. But my back is quite stiff now.
