I know Ed Miliband isn’t trying to persuade me or, for that matter, many Spectator readers but I still don’t understand what he’s up to or trying to achieve. At PMQs today he had an obvious choice: attack the government on the economy or on today’s strikes by government-paid workers. Bafflingly he chose the latter, wrapping himself in the red union flag. Not for the first time, one’s left questioning Miliband’s political judgement.
The easy answer, much-used by the Prime Minister today, is that Labour is paid by the Trades Unions without whose contributions the party would be bankrupt. Plainly there is some truth to this and perhaps Miliband has been persuaded that he might as well attempt to make a virtue of this since the accusation will be made anyway, whatever he says. But there’s a difference between putting up with political stereotyping and reinforcing said stereotyping. Miliband does not appear to know this.
Today’s strikes are a distraction but it seems typical of Miliband’s political intelligence that he would choose to focus on the sideshow not the economy which is, by some distance, the bigger problem and, not coincidentally, the area in which the governmet is more vulnerable. But by standing with the striking public sector unions Miliband chose to take the side of the few, not the many. I suspect voters have some sympathy for individual public sector workers (those they know or to whom they are related) but not for the strikes writ large and certainly not for the union bosses leading the agitation.
If one fact has seeped into the public consciousness since 2008 it is that There Is No More Money. The public doesn’t like bankers and it’s not too keen on the City either but it recognises that most people really are actually all in this together. That’s one reason why cutting the top rate of tax is inadvisable in the present political climate, no matter what numer-crunching experts say its fiscal impact might be. But this also means that low-paid workers in the private sector, enduring pay freezes and often worse themselves, also think is appropriate for public sector workers to make their contribution.
So when Ed Miliband defends the strikes he is, whether he really means to or not, arguing that public sector workers be privileged at the expense of private sector workers. There is no need to indulge in foolish (and needlessly divisive) rhetoric about the “productive and unproductive parts of the economy” to point this out. Nor should the government’s supporter make too much of “gold-plated” public sector pensions since not all (and perhaps not even a majority) of those pensions are notably generous. The argument is simpler than that: taxpayer-funded workers already enjoy advantages denied their private-sector counterparts but those need not extend to the ability to retire years earlier than workers in the public sector.
Meanwhile, many of those striking today appear to expect appreciation or some kind of extra vote of thanks simply for doing the jobs they have chosen to do. This too is not the sort of attitude likely to provoke a vast swell of public sympathy. When private sector workers strike (as they should have the right to do) they don’t generally expect the public to applaud them for inconveniencing the public. Yet this is what teachers (perhaps the greatest villains of all the striking unions today) demand!
I don’t suppose many people really blame public sector workers for acting in what they consider their self-interest but many people find it galling that this self-interest is presented to them as an act of ennobling self-sacrifice.
Perhaps Miliband feels he has little choice but to defend the strikes but it may well be worse than that: he may actually agree with the strikes and their impossible demands. That’s fine but it’s strange to ally himself with the few, not the many and to be seen defending those asking to be privileged in a time of general want.
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