Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer both came to Prime Minister’s Questions today wanting to talk about the rail strikes. The Tory leader was keen to pin the blame on Labour, pointing out that 25 MPs from that party joined RMT picket lines yesterday. Starmer meanwhile thinks, as I explained here, that he can be bullish on this too because the public are blaming the government.
The Labour leader asked whether Johnson was ‘genuine about preventing strikes’, calling for details of meetings he or Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had held with ‘rail workers’ (a way of avoiding saying ‘unions’) this week. Johnson’s line was that the Conservatives were the party of the ‘strivers’ rather than the strikers and that ‘we know why he won’t condemn the strikes’ – that Labour needed the unions’ money. ‘That’s the fee that the learned gentleman opposite is receiving for the case he is failing to make,’ he said, in reference to Starmer’s legal career.
Johnson had much to be uncomfortable about today
Starmer moved from the rail strikes to the contradiction of public sector pay restraint against plans to remove the bankers’ bonus cap:
‘Pay rises for city bankers, pay cuts for district nurses.
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