Rampant unions will embed high inflation

So farewell, Transpennine Express, the northern rail operator whose hapless management were no match for the Aslef union that was determined to see this underperforming franchise renationalised. TPE’s drivers, beneficiaries of the super-luxury conditions I recited last month, have effectively invented a new form of moral hazard: have no fear of crippling your employer with outrageous demands and relentless non-cooperation, because if it goes down, the government will step in and re-employ you on the same terms or better.

Aslef has more strikes planned nationally for 31 May and 3 June, and the other rail union RMT – having done its best to disrupt travel to Eurovision in Liverpool – says it may join in on the second date, which happens to be FA Cup final day. Royal College of Nursing members have voted to hold out for a double-digit pay rise, despite their own leader recommending a lower offer, and junior doctors are still chuntering too.

Teachers and civil servants, even driving examiners, are poised for more action, while airport workers await their best chance in peak holiday season. One way or another, the union movement is more rampant today than it has been for the past 40 years – bottom-up, because workers are distressed about inflation, and top-down wherever hard-left union leaders see opportunities to subvert privatised industries and make Tory ministers squirm.

Oddly, all this seems to be happening with barely a peep from the unions’ coordinating body, the TUC, which is almost as quiescent as the CBI and whose general secretary Paul Nowak, in post since December, is invisible. But the litany of pay demands and forthcoming stoppages has even knocked racism and trans stories off the top of BBC news agendas – and let’s be fair, it’s the legitimate role of workers’ reps to ask for more at a time of steeply rising prices.