James Forsyth reviews the week in politics.
There is a reason why Tory excitement about returning to government is so tempered: it could be war. The simple, grim mission awaiting them is to impose the sharpest cuts attempted by any postwar government while radically reforming many public services. The trade unions can be expected to respond aggressively, thinking they can turn Cameron just as they did Heath. A bloody collision of the type the Cameroons for so long hoped to avoid now seems inevitable.
Unsurprisingly, the Tories have little appetite for a Thatcher-style showdown with the brothers. And, quietly, they believe they have developed a strategy that will avert one. They calculate that the unions, while no friends of the Conservatives, respond rationally to threats and incentives. They also feel the unions are still hungry for government money and may be assuaged by the offer of it. In short, they reckon union leaders are hungry for carrots and fearful of certain sticks: that is to say, men they can do business with.
Both sides are beginning to sketch out the ground rules. One Labour backbencher with close links to the unions says that it will be hard to call strikes over issues the Tories have taken to the country in their manifesto, such as the freeze in public sector pay. In fact, he argues, the unions are doing Labour a favour by forcing the Conservatives to be more frank than they might otherwise be as to what they would actually do in government. Every time the Tories are explicit about what they plan to do, they remove a possible casus belli. The unions know that the question of ‘who governs Britain’ was answered by Thatcher.
Then, the finance. At present, Labour has a device that siphons taxpayers’ money into the unions (which, in turn, donate money to Labour). It is, officially, a ‘modernisation fund’ to advance the cause of industrial relations and worth about £10 million of taxpayers’ money. Just last month, Francis Maude summed it up neatly: ‘Union barons fund the Labour party by ripping off union members. In turn, Labour ministers fund the union barons by ripping off taxpayers.’ The obvious thing to do is for the Tories to abolish it.
But I am told that plans are being formed to keep the fund. Mr Cameron’s personal envoy to the unions, a personable former Labour MEP named Richard Balfe, has quietly reassured several union leaders that the fund will survive for at least two years. This serves two purposes. First, it is an olive branch to the unions, a sign that the Tories do not want to declare war on them. Second, it hands Mr Cameron a bargaining chip. Brown’s slush fund can become a Tory good-behaviour bond. If the unions are not interested in a constructive relationship with the government, then the fund goes.
There are other ways of endearing the Conservatives to the unions. The ‘trust the professionals’ mantra in health — together with a proposed NHS Independence Act — is seen as a policy the unions should welcome. Indeed, the Cameroon decentralisation agenda can be spun as a means of trusting professionals more, ending the culture of form-filling that has grown under Labour and offering workers more control to increase their job satisfaction. It is hoped, perhaps naively, that greater freedom from bureau-cracy will help alleviate the anger caused by restrictions on pay.
Interestingly, the green agenda could provide new common ground between a Tory government and the unions. The unions have become increasingly interested in environmental issues, seeing this as a way to promote their agenda; they are pushing for statutory green officers in the workplace. The Tories are hoping to persuade the unions to take part in their proposed ‘green deal’, allowing people to borrow up to £6,500 against future savings on their energy bills in order to help insulate their homes.
So far, so friendly. But at the same time, an agenda is being discussed to curtail the ability of unions to call for industrial action. Boris Johnson’s office is floating the idea of minimum required turnouts for strike ballots. The Mayor of London has in his sights the RMT union, which represents many tube drivers and likes to strike first and ask questions later; this June the RMT walked out after a ballot in which less than a third of members voted. The proposal from City Hall is to change the law nationally so that a strike can only be held if turnout is more than a certain amount.
Such measures are needed when one considers the almost anachronistic strength of the unions in the public sector. Nigh on nine out of ten public sector offices are unionised — twice the ratio in the rest of the economy. And even without public sector reform, arguments will certainly flare over pensions. For years, the Tories have been critical of the pensions ‘apartheid’ between the public and private sectors — talking about the £4 billion a year cost of the final salary scheme and the public sector pensions liability estimated at anything between £650 billion and £1.1 trillion. But as Tony Blair found out, any attempt to rewrite the terms of these deals will be fiercely resisted.
Another area of possible conflict is the Tories’ plans for school liberalisation. The NUT and the NASUWT have both made their opposition to these plans clear, as Michael Gove proposes free schools immune from national pay bargaining. But a strike over a Tory manifesto commitment would be a strategic blunder by the unions. In any such dispute, the Conservatives would easily be able to portray themselves as being on the side of parents and pupils, and the unions as self-interested defenders of a broken system that fails the most vulnerable.
A return to the epic government-union confrontations of the previous decades is unlikely. The unions know it is not 1971 and the smarter organisations are increasingly beginning to grasp that industrial action is best used as part of a public relations strategy — as a way of drawing attention to a cause. The Tories have keenly grasped the PR point too and are determined to avoid macho posturing that could be seen as provocative. But, as one shadow Cabinet member put it to me, if challenged, they will respond with ‘grim determination’. The brothers have been put on notice.
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