Has the mighty RMT gone too far?

None of the politicians in charge of the Tube, from Margaret Thatcher to Ken Livingstone, has been able to tame its might. Boris Johnson now inherits the role of being the person to articulate Londoners' aggravation.

It is possible for the RMT to use the short strike effectively because London depends so heavily on the Tube.

Bob Crow and his colleagues calculate it is worth losing a couple of days' pay to improve pay and conditions. The tactic has worked very well from the union's point of view. Tube drivers are paid around £40,000 a year for a short week with long holidays. 

The capital's economic output is worth about £1billion per working day, so even reducing this amount by five per cent would cost £50 million. Some of the lost activity can be caught up but not all.

This means the union can always argue it is worth the city paying up because the cost to Transport for London will be less than value of lost output.

Ken Livingstone spooked the RMT.  Using his deep knowledge of the factional politics of the far Left, he kept down the number of strikes by making it clear he would not tolerate endless confrontations. 

Boris Johnson has not been schooled in the wackier groves of this kind of politics. But he is a Conservative and the first one to be personally in charge of the TfL when the RMT has flexed its muscle.

He could either accept Bob Crow's capacity to dictate terms or he could fight. His refusal to meet the RMT suggests he is at least mooting mild confrontation.

Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy, writing in yesterday's Standard, described the union's actions in demanding the reinstatement of two sacked workers by saying "a gun was held to our heads". It seems the Tory mayor is taking a relatively hard line. 

Hendy understands that the short strikes show the RMT does not want long stoppages. Because Tube drivers are relatively well paid - many have mortgages and other accoutrements of a bourgeois lifestyle - a long strike would cause big economic problems for them.

The union, which generally doesn't care about public opinion, may also find itself being tarred with the same "fat cat" brush being used on bankers and MPs.

These are changing times and people are changing their views. They might even be willing to back a mayor who took on the mighty RMT.

Tony Travers is director of the Greater London group at the LSE.