PopCon's Swift invites us to consider who might win the never-ending round of contests between public sector trade union barons and fresh-faced Labour ministers
Picture the scene. We are spying on a table in the department of transport, dear readers. Let us see what might occur.
On one side, is flame-haired ingėnue Louise Haigh, over-promoted to Secretary of State, surrounded by her milquetoast civil servants, fresh from their latest DEI ‘workshop’ - no term is so abused - on allyship and pronouns. They are shuffling papers and looking nervous.
On the other is granite-faced Mick Whelan, leader of the train drivers union ASLEF, and his fellow stick-up artists, whose every waking moment is devoted to extracting unjustified pay increases via cunningly timed strikes, causing the greatest inconvenience to the railway passengers whose interests they hypocritically claim to defend. Mick - who normally has a boat race like a bulldog that has just licked the piss off nettles - now has a lupine smile.
For Swift can reveal that Haigh and her entourage have removed the responsibility for settling the rail strikes from the experienced and tough-minded (at least by Labour standards) Rail Delivery Group, and took it into their own soft and child-like hands. Whelan is delighted. Taking candy from babies would have been tougher than this.
It is perhaps worth remembering that Haigh’s most conspicuous decision in the first weeks of the Labour government has been to ignore the rule set out by Angela Rayner, who outranks her considerably, that there should be no gimmicks or slogans, and has instead decided that her department should adopt the motto ‘move fast and fix things’. Total cringe.
But fixes are indeed her speciality, as Swift will show. Lynch will get up from the table with a wildly generous pay settlement north of 14% over three years, a lot more than previously offered. Worse, it will be a deal completely shorn of those necessary reforms to working practices and productivity gains that ASLEF has refused to accept, lest these knights of the iron road be forced to inconvenience themselves on behalf of their customers.
Swift does not blame Whelan. His job is to try to extract the maximum emoluments for his members from the rail network and the government. If the Treasury has to find the money to fund it, or rail ticket prices have to increase, it ain’t his problem.
It is, esteemed readers, yours.
This is the latest in a succession of pay settlements which will cost the nation a lot of money. Pen-pushers, nurses, teachers, NHS staff, junior doctors and now train drivers. GPs are next in line.
Now some of these settlements might be justified (not all). But do any of them deliver improvements in service? Nope. Not one.
Labour’s hopeless rubes have sold us all down the river. And for what? next year there will be more demands - the BMA has already said so, and it won't be the only trade union licking its lips. This is shoddy curation of the taxpayer interest in favour of bribing extortion artists who will never ever be satisfied.
Railroaded? Swift certainly thinks so.