Boris takes on Dave over London’s strikes

The Telegraph’s James Kirkup has already highlighted Boris’s suggestion, yesterday, that the coalition is being “lily-livered” over strike laws. But, as there has been no let up in the Mayor’s rhetoric today, we really ought to mention it here too. “The government needs to get a move on,” is how he put it this morning, in reference to the sort of legislation that might hinder the RMT and their persistent Tube strikes.

Boris’s latest broadsides against the coalition are all the more notable because he and Cameron were united, arm in arm, against the unions only a few months ago. In a joint piece for the Sun in January, they raged that, “you can try to drag this country back to the 1970s, to a time when militants held our country to ransom, but you will not succeed.” And soon after that, the Prime Minister suggested that he was “very happy” to look at the policies being proposed by Boris, particularly those advocating stronger requirements on strike ballots. The Mayor even met with Philip Hammond to discuss the same.

But all that has changed now; the government’s resolve to take on the unions diluted by the qualms of the Lib Dems. And it has left Boris pushing the case that he made, to such an enraptured response, at last year’s Tory conference. The Prime Minister may have to make concessions to his coalition partners, but Boris faces no such impediment — and he’s going to let No.10 know it.