I have my doubts that Vladimir Putin cares very much about the pay disputes of British nurses. He is probably the richest man in the world, and you don’t get there by taking a granular interest in other people’s living standards. He likely has very little concept of the difference between £31,000 a year and £310,000. Besides, he has his own problems.
Nevertheless, I can see how Nadhim Zahawi ended up telling nurses that they were playing into Putin’s hands with their demand for a pay rise, because Zahawi is out of road. He cannot reasonably tell them they don’t deserve more money: the average public sector worker has earned less in terms of gross pay than private sector workers every year since 2014. Nurses toughed out the pandemic on non-fungible claps, and emerge from it into a cost of living crisis. All the usual arguments for pay restraint – you don’t deserve it, we can’t afford it, do your worst, there are plenty more where you came from – have evaporated, leaving only: “Do your patriotic duty, because of the bad man.” Granted, he may have phrased it with more aplomb.
