Strikes

Sam Tarry, who joined today’s picket line at Euston and gave various interviews from there, has been sacked from the Labour shadow transport team and the front bench. However, Tarry has not been sacked for being on the picket line, but for making unauthorised media appearances. Labour’s line is that this isn't about appearing on a picket line. Members of the frontbench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed frontbench positions.  This morning, Tarry implied that rail workers would not have gone on strike under a Labour government as they would have been offered a more generous pay deal. Given that Tarry is a close ally of Angela Rayner, his sacking will cause comment.

The political focus this morning was centred around the three days’ worth of railway disruption due to begin on Tuesday. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps joined Sophy Ridge to make the case against strike action, taking aim at the leadership of the RMT union: https://twitter.com/RidgeOnSunday/status/1538425932326834177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Union calls for government meeting are ‘a stunt’ Sophie Raworth also interviewed Shapps, and asked him about last week’s call from the RMT to get around the negotiating table with government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQgW0BFlOgw Mick Lynch – ‘We’re facing a crisis’ RMT leader Mick Lynch also joined Ridge to put forward the case for industrial action.

Picket lines, striking teachers egged on by a left-wing trade union, and children missing out on their education. No, not a chapter from a history of the Winter of Discontent, but rather scenes playing out on the streets of Britain in February 2022. It seems that the bad old days of the inner-city comprehensives in the 1970s are back but with a catch: now they’re playing out at some of the most elite girls’ schools in the country. For Mr S hears that all is not well among the hard-pressed parents of children at the fee-paying Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), a network of 23 independent schools in England and Wales. It educates about 20,000 girls aged from 3 to 18 in London, Birkenhead, Norwich, Newcastle and elsewhere.