On site visits, the PM and ministers like to dress up as workers, but their only actual power is to make everything worse
Christmas week brings an exciting labour market win for Rishi Sunak, as the prime minister finally manages to appoint an ethics adviser. For the past few months, this empty role has begun to look like one of the jobs that British people no longer seem minded to do, like fruit picking or being Nigel Farage’s wife. As part of Sunak’s commitment to being the change he wants to see, his ethics guy is Sir Laurie Magnus, a former investment banker who won’t have the power to launch his own investigations. Maybe this is Sunak’s version of a terrible cracker joke.
A full 18 hours into his job, Magnus has yet to stage a wildcat strike, which feels like a rare industrial relations success for the prime minister. For those struggling to keep track of who else is on strike, a useful rule of thumb is that if a secretary of state has dressed up as one on a visit this year, they are now taking industrial action.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
