A potent Tory tag team in the Sun today, as David Cameron and Boris Johnson join pens to
take on the unions. The tone of their article is as blunt as anything we’ve
heard from them on the matter, particularly the Prime Minister. “Let’s call these threats what they are,” it says about the prospect of strikes during the Royal Wedding and the Olympics:
“nothing more than headline grabbing to score political points”. And it continues to deliver a warning to union bosses: “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.”
It’s not all frontal assault, though. There’s a subtler vein of divide-and-conquer in all this. BoCam make an appeal to “union leaders who are … willing to engage in sensible dialogue” – which presumably refers more to those who recently shared mince pies with the PM at No.10, rather than, say, Len McCluskey. And they remind union members of the damage that militancy might wreak upon “not just … your own cause, but to the lives of ordinary workers, the health of our economy and the reputation of our country.” The implication, made explicitly later on, is that the moderates should step forward now.
The question is whether this is just Cameron and Boris letting off steam together, or whether it means closer cooperation between the pair from now on. The Mayor of London, if you recall, received a euphoric response when he suggested measures for curbing union militancy at party conference. And he has certainly discussed the same with coalitioneers before now. It’s worth looking out for whether any of that influences the statute books.
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