PLEASE say it isn’t the 1970s all over again? What is going on in our country?
A Government that seems to know it is on the way out. Sky-high inflation. Strikes. Unions threatening us. Union leaders becoming household names again. And politicians siding with the strikers.
It all seems so abstract — until it isn’t.
How many of us are now having to rethink our Christmas plans as we realise that the rail unions truly have decided to strike over Christmas and ruin the plans of hard-working Britons? All in time for the first “normal” Christmas in years.
How many of us who are last-minute present buyers are starting to realise that “last-minute” this year means the start of December thanks to mail strikes.
All of this, and much more, is about to cripple our country like a blackout. And what are our politicians doing?
Well, the Labour Party is as keen as ever to keep their union paymasters on their side. So they are actually trying to protect the strikers
“Moderate” Sir Keir Starmer and his friends are refusing to back new anti-strike laws.
With his obnoxious and foul-mouthed deputy Angela Rayner, Labour are siding with the outrageous demands of the strikers. Why are the demands outrageous?
Because this country has a historic national debt and there is simply no money to pay the unions what they are demanding.
In any case, why should they get a pay rise? The rest of us have to see our pay packets remain stagnant and worse, eaten away by inflation.
Why should rail and postal workers expect above-inflation pay rises? Have they performed especially brilliantly of late?
I don’t think so. Instead, delay and disruption are the order of the day. And I don’t see why that should be rewarded.
Of course, in normal times a Conservative Prime Minister would set themselves up against this.
Were Margaret Thatcher around she would be the terror of these greedy shirkers (sorry, strikers).
But she is not. Instead, the Conservative Party has once again given us a leader who has yet to prove he can lead.
I admire Rishi Sunak for at least trying to pass anti-strike laws. But he needs to go much further. He needs to show that Britain cannot — and must not — be held to ransom by the unions.
If Mrs T was in charge she would be out in front, blasting the strikers, explaining what she was going to do to them and rallying the country to her side.
But where is Mr S? So far Sunak has made some appearances at Prime Minister’s Questions. But where is his big effort to mobilise the country against these greedy union extremists?
Bring hell to unions
He can be visible when he wants to be. When he is jetting into COP27 with other world leaders to explain how we should cripple our energy needs he is very visible indeed.
But this country has a set of much more pressing priorities than glad-handing at bigwig summits.
As he travels abroad to these international shindigs Labour are at home trying to eat his lunch.
Just consider what Labour Shadow Cabinet minister Lisa Nandy said this week. “Everywhere you go now there’s a sense that Britain’s not working.”
It pains me to say it but she is right. And it is no one thing that is causing that.
Rishi Sunak arrived into No 10 with a very full inbox on the domestic and international stage.
But he has a very short time (less than two years) to show he can turn things around. And if there’s one thing that is most important to turn around it is the whiff of national decline.
Nothing — absolutely nothing — spells decline more than strikes.
Movie-makers know that. Watch a film like Mrs Harris Goes To Paris and you can see how the film-makers try to portray 1950s France.
What is it that stands out? Rubbish strikes. The fact that the characters in Paris have to tiptoe around piles of stinking, uncollected garbage.
It is the same in every era. If you want to show a country on the down you focus on the things that aren’t working.
Britain in the 2020s should be a country that is booming. We should be dynamic, exciting, filled with ambition and get-up-and-go.
But if things go on as they are the film-makers of the future will show a very different picture.
Britain in the 2020s will be shown as a nation whose Christmas parcels couldn’t arrive by post and couldn’t even be delivered in person either.
So, Rishi, you can coast along. Or you can bring hell to the unions. Your move.
