The replacement of the hapless Liz Truss by Rishi Sunak was widely assumed to herald the return of a “grown-up”, managerial style of politics to Downing Street. With the markets duly placated by Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement, some senior Tories even began to worry that Sunakian stability and fiscal orthodoxy would be too boring a platform on which to face Labour at the next election.
But it turns out that, outside the City, Britons aren’t bored by Mr Sunak’s fledgling premiership; they are furious and insurgent. Rail and postal workers, nurses, ambulance workers and civil servants are currently planning to go on strike in December. They may be joined by teachers and junior doctors in the new year. In all, more than a million members of the workforce may withdraw their labour in the lead-up to Christmas – numbers reminiscent of the “winter of discontent” in 1978/9. This is despite lower levels of union membership and far more stringent rules governing strike action.
Disastrously, after being buffeted into U-turns on housebuilding and onshore windfarms by internal party revolts, Mr Sunak appears to see the strikes as a chance to confound those critics who accuse him of being weak. At prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, he challenged Keir Starmer to back even tougher anti-strike legislation, to be introduced next year. As the transport secretary, Mark Harper, has admitted, this will not affect industrial action this winter, but that is not the point. The government’s current strategy is to whip up a confrontation with the unions in the belief that the public will be on its side.
This “who governs?” approach famously ended badly for Edward Heath, who lost an election called on that basis in 1974. But Mr Sunak no doubt prefers to dwell on Margaret Thatcher’s triumph in 1979, when the argument that unions were “holding the country to ransom” – a line repeated by ministers this week – contributed to a Tory landslide. Unfortunately for the prime minister, that was then.
By the end of the 1970s, much of the population agreed that unions had become too powerful. Forty years on, as Mr Sunak promises to legislate to “protect” the public, popular sympathy for the right to strike has actually grown since June. The reasons for that go beyond particular disputes, and deeper than the current cost of living crisis. There is a widespread and accurate public perception that, since the crash, the country has witnessed a boom in unearned asset wealth and pay at the top, combined with stagnating or falling real-terms wages for almost everyone else. A decade of underinvestment in the public sector has also fuelled a perception that much of the country just doesn’t work properly any more. Responsibility for this dysfunctional state of affairs is deemed not to lie with 1970s-style militant trade unionists, but with successive Conservative governments.
If only from an instinct of self-preservation, a wise administration would recognise this backdrop and negotiate, and compromise, accordingly. Ahead of a winter recession that strikes will only deepen, this would also be the right thing to do for the country. But for now, Mr Sunak’s fiscal conservatism means he will not countenance such an approach. Instead, he appears determined to foment social strife in the hope of isolating Labour and uniting his own party with some retro rhetoric. That is misguided and irresponsible opportunism, not grown-up politics. It also seriously misreads the mood of the nation.
