20 April 2023 , 19:27
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Our country is in the grip of strikes chaos, from schoolroom to hospital ward.
Why? Because it’s being run by a bunch of inexperienced amateurs who don’t know how to do the job.
They’ve only been in office five minutes and they’ve never had to deal with social unrest on this scale. There are no old hands who’ve seen it all before, and who know how to sort things out.
And there are so many ways to do it. Ministers could ask the conciliation service ACAS to mediate. That’s what it’s for.
A traditional Tory government would have done so already, and if that didn’t work, they would have set up a court of inquiry.
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
Or they could get off their backsides and negotiate directly with unions on pay for teachers, NHS workers and other public sectors.
Top medics have called on pig-headed Steve Barclay to drop his pre-conditions (Getty Images)There is always a deal to be done – what the late TUC boss Vic Feather ruefully called “a shabby compromise”. That’s what unions are for, to do deals for their members. But this lot don’t do deals. They see themselves as Thatcher’s heirs, ideological warriors with a mission to show who’s boss.
That’s behind what is rapidly becoming a year of discontent. The Tories are hell-bent on humbling the unions and humiliating their members, believing there are votes in it.
Ted Heath tried that in 1974 with the miners’ strike. It backfired spectacularly.
Top medics yesterday called on pig-headed Health Secretary Steve Barclay to drop his pre-conditions – that doctors abandon their pay claim and call off strikes, essentially surrender – and accept independent mediation.
The docs are willing, insisting their pay claim is “not set in stone”. ACAS is willing. The country is desperate. What’s not to want?
Tory Cabinet amateurs owe it to the nation to accept the medical chiefs’ advice and avert a looming health catastrophe.