Strikes riddle
WE’RE struggling to fathom the Government’s contradictory position on strikes.
We get that Keir Starmer wants to end the ceaseless walkouts which caused chaos under the Tories.
1
We get too that he believes public sector pay must rise to ease morale and recruitment problems.
Agree or not, there is a logic to that.
But the pay deals being showered on the train drivers and junior doctors — with many more to come — are staggeringly generous.
And they require no increases in productivity, changes to archaic working practices or commitments to strike less or not at all.
Aslef’s militant rail workers disgracefully celebrated their 14 per cent offer by almost instantly calling another walkout.
How do they think that looks for the Labour Party they support?
Incredibly, though, the new Government intends to make strikes easier.
Overturning a Tory law, it would allow walkouts without unions needing majority support from their members.
That is a green light for mayhem. It is not an end to strikes, nor the blueprint for growth Labour says it has prioritised.
Wrong call
MANY workers will celebrate a Government clampdown on bosses calling them at home on their time off. That doesn’t make it sound economic policy.
We don’t believe, as Downing Street does, that Britain’s low productivity is down to staff being unable to “switch off” and demotivated by long hours.
Besides, some entire industries cannot function without staff being contactable outside normal hours.
Labour needs to focus on the genuine change it promised: A house-building revolution, major NHS reform and so on.
It should not waste time meddling in the ways firms, which are the backbone of our economy, interact with their own staff.
Out, brother
PRINCE Andrew is at Balmoral on his summer break. From what?
From sulking in the 31-room Windsor mansion he is clinging on to because he believes his status entitles him to it.
No royal has lacked self-awareness quite like the grandiose Duke of York.
He disgraced his family so offensively via the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal that even the mother who loved him stripped him of his royal roles.
And his brother’s patience for keeping him afloat has run out — as removing Andrew’s security team shows.
Instead of the Royal Lodge, the Duke has been offered Frogmore House, the secure, spacious home Harry and Meghan once lavishly refitted.
Yet even the house of most ordinary people’s dreams won’t suffice for a man of such Olympian self-regard and incurable self-entitlement.
The King should send the removal vans.