Business Secretary John Hutton

What crass timing. Today, Britain faces its worst economic crisis since the 1930s, with homes and jobs at risk everywhere.

Yet this is the moment the unions choose to flex their muscles and try to bludgeon the Government into adopting measures that would put countless more livelihoods in jeopardy.

How’s that for a catastrophic misjudgment of the public mood?

With Labour depending on them for 90 per cent of its funds, union leaders are determined to show the Government who is boss. So with bone-headed belligerence, they have drawn up more than 100 demands to put to ministers this weekend.

Some, such as the call for stiff tax rises for the rich, would crush incentives and reignite the class war.

Others, including the demand to bring back flying pickets, would undo the hard-won reforms of the Thatcher years, threatening to plunge us into a new age of industrial strife.

The union barons are even seeking to dictate who should serve in the Government, demanding the head of Business Minister John Hutton.

Mercifully, Gordon Brown is resisting most of the demands. But there are worrying signs he may yield to others.

Take the call for a ‘maximum working temperature’ and for ‘green reps’ in every workplace. Does anyone suppose our Chinese and Indian competitors are saddled with burdens like these?

Then there’s the demand for more flexible hours for fathers – including paid holidays to help children revise for exams.

Yes, in an ideal world, fathers would have more time with their young. But in the real world, where there are mouths to be fed and mortgages to be paid? It’s a recipe for destroying British businesses.

At the end of the 1970s, in the Winter of Discontent, we saw what union power did to our country.

Indeed, we’ve had another taste of it this week, as passport workers seek to cash in on the misery of thousands of hard-working families by launching their mean-spirited strike at the height of the holiday season.

No. At this desperate time for the economy, Mr Brown will be judged on how firmly he resists his paymasters.

Banishing the bags

Just five months since we launched the Mail’s Banish the Bags campaign, a revolution has taken place in Britain’s attitude to one of the great unnecessary pollutants of the modern world.

On every high street, more and more shoppers are carrying reusable ‘bags for life’ instead of the throwaway plastic variety – used for 20 minutes before taking 1,000 years to decompose.

Today, we report the remarkable success of Marks & Spencer, whose charge of 5p per bag has led to an astonishing 80 per cent cut in the number of plastic carriers handed out.

Meanwhile, Aldi, Lidl and Netto have found charging for bags helps them cut pollution – and food prices too.

Warmest congratulations, then, to the shoppers of Britain and to the supermarkets leading the way.

But shame on Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose, which stubbornly refuse to introduce charges for their bags.

The Government has pledged to force them to do so if they haven’t changed their ways by next April.

Time is running out.

Cost of an ego trip

This week, taxpayers have had their first glimpse of the bill for Tony Blair’s farewell ego trip around the world: a cool £750,000 for a tour that had less to do with Britain’s interests than with one man’s vanity.

Certainly, Mr Brown has his faults. But would anyone want his preening, freeloading predecessor back?