Liz Truss loves it. The British Foreign Secretary, favorite to succeed Boris Johnson, readily poses as Margaret Thatcher’s heir. With a major rail strike planned for Saturday 13th August in the UK and the country experiencing a ‘summer of discontent’, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to the front.
” [Si je deviens première ministre]i will attack [aux syndicats] with an emergency law that will make it harder to shut down cities with strikes,” she wrote in an Evening Standard column on Monday 8 August. It promises to introduce a minimum service obligation for all “essential national infrastructure”. “It is unacceptable for the public to be held hostage by militant unions,” she said on July 27. (…) I stand with people who work hard, go to the office, want to run their businesses. »
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Before Boris Johnson almost disappeared from the political landscape, he also regularly attacked the unions. On June 20, he proposed authorizing the use of temporary workers to replace the strikers. This was a gesture that “even Margaret Thatcher would not have dared to do,” responded the Trades Union Congress, the most important British trade union federation. The idea disappeared at the same time as the outgoing head of government.
While it is not particularly surprising that the leaders of the British Conservative Party are vilifying unions, the attitude of the Labor opposition is even more surprising. Keir Starmer, the Labor leader, banned members of his ‘shadow cabinet’ from appearing with the strikers. The unionists, despite relative popular support, do not have a major party behind them.
Surprising positioning
However, Mr. Starmer’s slogan caused controversy within his training. On July 27, Sam Tarry, the “shadow minister” responsible for transport, appeared alongside the striking railroad workers and gave an interview on television. Mr. Starmer immediately fired him. “He’s right,” John McTernan, who was operations manager under Tony Blair (1997-2007), told a Guardian column on August 2. In his view, such a display of militancy would be “a throwback to the 1970s, which sends the message that MPs want Labor to be a simple protest party, not power”.
Not everyone is convinced by this argument. Lisa Nandy, an influential member of the “shadow cabinet” in charge of inequality, also visited the strikers, in this case those from BT, the former British telecom. However, she neither gave an interview nor made a big statement, which saved her from losing her job.
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