With suspicion mounting that UK Government Ministers are more interested in scoring party political points than resolving disputes with key workers, the good faith of senior Tories is in doubt.
Clapping nurses, carers and others delivering public services during the pandemic then financially slapping them with measly, living standard crushing pay offers is grotesque hypocrisy from a regime accused of relishing confrontation in the hope it deflects from them crashing the economy.
Nursing unions accepting higher wage deals in Scotland to avoid walkouts only emphasises how a hardline Conservative administration is provoking strikes in England.
