Ross Clark

We all know about the teachers and train drivers, but apparently there are 100,000 civil servants in 124 government departments and quangos also on strike today – if anyone has noticed. It includes members of the PCS union employed at the DWP, National Highways, the Food Standards Agency and, er, the Risk Management Authority, Trade Remedies Authority, Council for the RFSAs and, of course, Bord na Gaidhlig. It is only thanks to their striking that many people will ever have heard of them.

Today, if you feel so inclined to celebrate it, is Brexit Day: the date on which, three years ago, Britain formally left the EU – although the transitional arrangements kept us effectively within the bloc for a further 11 months. But does anyone feel like celebrating? Only really in the Lincolnshire Wash, going by an opinion poll commissioned by the website unHerd. That is the only part of the country, it seems, where most residents still think that Britain was right to bid adieu to its European neighbours. Nationally, 45 per cent of people think Brexit is going worse than expected, according to polling by Ipsos Mori. This figure is a rise from 28 per cent in June 2021. As expected, 66 per cent of Remain voters think it’s been a flop.

The dead went unburied and the rubbish piled high in Leicester Square. Then a suntanned Jim Callaghan arrived back at Heathrow from a summit in Guadeloupe to tell reporters, in words fairly paraphrased in the Sun headline: ‘Crisis. What crisis?’ The Prime Minister said that he didn’t think the rest of the world, looking at Britain, would see a country going down the tube. The folklore of the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 is ingrained in the nation’s collective memory. It was the final act of a miserable decade of three-day working weeks and power cuts. Some are suggesting that we are facing a second Winter of Discontent. Certainly, look at the strike calendar for January and there is something going on – or not going on – every day.

Just why is Chris Skidmore’s review into the government’s target to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 called an ‘independent’ review? It somewhat stretches the definition of the word ‘independent’. Skidmore was the very minister – the Energy and Clean Growth Minister – who pushed the net zero commitment through the House of Commons in the first place in 2019. He remains a Conservative MP. Putting him in charge of an ‘independent’ review on net zero is analogous to Rishi Sunak putting Boris Johnson in charge of a ‘independent’ review into Brexit. That, of course, would be laughed out of the House of Commons. But things seem to work very differently in the world of net zero.

Labour feels strongly on the NHS – you can tell that by the number of times Keir Starmer brings up the NHS during Prime Minister’s questions, which he did again today. Historically, the NHS has always been a weak point for the Conservatives. In spite of granting the health service ever more resources, come election time Labour automatically trots out the charge that the Tories are out to privatise or otherwise dismantle the NHS. But has Starmer made a miscalculation in attacking the government’s proposed strike laws, which would oblige the unions to ensure that minimum service levels are maintained in the ambulance service, as well as several other public services, on strike days?

The calendar for January is already pock-marked with strike dates for railway workers, ambulance staff, postal workers and others. But does the current situation really deserve to be compared with the Winter of Discontent in 1979, when the rubbish piled high in Leicester Square and dead went unburied (as the gravediggers went on strike)? The answer is surely no – or at least not yet. So long as the government holds firm against wage demands, Rishi Sunak should have no fear of being humiliated as Jim Callaghan was then. As was the case 44 years ago, the unions are engaged in a raw exercise of power. Yet they are struggling a lot more now to bring the government to the table.