The prime minister is pitting the public against trade unionists — forgetting that, in millions of cases, they are the same people
In Britain, the feelings that strikes arouse in Tory politicians can be more complicated than you might think. At first, there is often outrage that the usual supremacy of bosses over workers has been suspended. Preserving such hierarchies is one of Conservatism’s main aims.
But then there is sometimes a sense of opportunity: a belief that the strikers and their supporters may fall into a familiar trap, set by decades of anti-union legislation and press propaganda. Ever since Margaret Thatcher defeated the miners and other unions in the 1980s, Conservatives have believed that strikes can be used to make Tory governments look tough, and to discredit Labour and the wider left. The succession of aggressive, deliberately provocative anti-strike measures announced over the last six months by the governments of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and now Rishi Sunak all reflect an assumption that taking on the unions is one of the few remaining strategies that might get the Conservatives re-elected.
