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It's all a bit close for Gordon Brown's comfort. Six weeks before an election, a spectre is haunting Labour.
The British Airways strike and the behaviour of the Unite union behind it is such a throwback to Seventies militancy that it would be no surprise if the participants were to emerge wearing flares and humming You Won't Get Me, I'm Part of the Union.
Well, they might, at this rate, get Mr Brown into a lot of trouble. His weakest link is that he is far more often behind the curve than ahead of it. He should have announced when industrial action was first mooted last year that it was an unreasonable and foolish imposition on an economy that was still perilously close to the double-dip doldrums.
A public already struggling with anxieties over job losses, tax rises and looming cuts is unlikely to greet the prospect of cancelled holidays and airport chaos with a song in its heart.
It is wholly unclear why Unite has recommended a strike to BA workers over the cost savings — other than it may be their last chance to wring concessions out of a Labour government. Budget cuts are, after all, commonplace in the current economic situation. Many workers accept reductions in pay and perks to preserve their jobs. The notion that BA chief executive Willie Walsh is picking on one workforce is wide of the mark.
The only beneficiary of the present intransigence will be BA's competitors. I am surely not alone in recently booking a budget airline flight for an Easter trip, where I would have preferred the relative comfort and reliability of the main UK carrier.
That uncertainty among customers has been fomented by the intended strike — and it will not return until the conflict is over.
The Government has tried hard to claim that this stand-off is industrial rather than political. That is nonsense: strikes on this scale are inevitably political and intended to be so. Moreover, Mr Brown has direct personal relations with the union leaders, who have funded Labour to the tune of £11 million since he became leader.
The closeness of Unite's political director Charlie Whelan to Mr Brown is one of the eternal recurrences of politics. Charlie is never really far away from the machinations of Camp Gordon. Now he is deeply involved in election planning — and the selection of Left-wing candidates in key target Labour seats, an attempt to secure the succession after Mr Brown.
The influence of Unite on the selection of candidates for the election has been a source of growing concern inside New Labour. Historian Tristram Hunt, a favourite of Peter Mandelson, recently found himself outmanoeuvred in Leyton and Wanstead by the Left-wing candidate John Cryer, who had Unite backing. The union also parachuted Harriet Harman's trade unionist husband Jack Dromey into a safe seat in Birmingham.
James Purnell, the Blairite ex-minister vacating Stalybridge and Hyde, has also raised questions about the selection of shortlisted candidates for the seat, which he believed has been manipulated to install a Unite official. Downing Street has since intervened to ensure that the final shortlist is extended to include other candidates outside the Left-wing comfort zone.
The Tories' schools secretary Michael Gove cites 59 seats under Unite's influence. Labour sources maintain the number is “well half that”, but concede that the union now has greater influence inside the Labour Party machine.
Aides come, aides go, but Mr Whelan is stubbornly difficult to remove from influence on Team Brown. Does the Prime Minister, positioning himself as the champion of Middle England against the posh Tories and disreputable bankers, see no contradiction in giving house room to the man who is political director of the union holding the national airline to ransom?
If the belief was that having senior Brownites on the inside of the unions would somehow protect him from militancy, that has failed. Mr Brown looks a hostage to events. Even his language — “deplorable” is not a word usually in his vocabulary — sounds strained. If the strike is so deplorable, why is his old mate helping to run it?
What Mr Brown needs to say unambiguously is that workers' rights do not exist independently of the economic realities around them. To lead — or rather mislead — workers into bankrupting their company in a recession is a failure of representation, not a triumph of the collective union will.
As so often in his time as Chancellor and PM, Gordon wants it both ways. He adopts the mannerisms and superficialities of a modernising New Labour project while underneath it, the old alliances are tended — not least because Unite is such a major donor to Labour.
Now there's a solid case for party funding reform. Unite draws subscriptions from two million members but they are not consulted about which party their money is going to. Members might well be bewildered that the party they fund now condemns its actions.
I suspect that Mr Brown, the recipient of telegraphic insider knowledge from Mr Whelan, has concluded that the strike is likely to go ahead, so the best he can do is disapprove of it. He let slip his real concerns when he told Radio 4's Woman's Hour that it was not “the right time”, which might make us wonder which time the PM would consider right for a national airline stoppage.
As for Unite, its leadership is lamentable and its reasoning unclear. By mounting a high-profile stoppage weeks from a tightly fought election, it has thrown attention back onto Labour's union links and diluted what Number 10 sources were gleefully calling “the Ashcroft bonus”, after the embarrassment caused by the Tories' major donor.
How apposite it would be if the union that has funded Gordon Brown's Labour Party helped usher in a Tory government.
There is one simple way to end this strike before it wreaks further damage. BA workers are not slaves to the union hierarchy: they are its masters. They should see sense — and just say no.
Reader views (11)
British Airways has always been a rip-off, over-hyped, over priced airline,..with snooty snotty-nosed condescending cabin staff who think their Tory toffs
That offers fights to Europe at outlandish extortionate prices,..like Lufthansa
For years they have been screwing poor joe public,..by foisting business class rates on normal commuters flying to Berlin, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf etc.
The sooner BA goes to the wall the better.
The BA management lost all credibility with the public the moment they stabbed Concorde in its back and scrapped it.
A flying legend,.the most superb machine flying in the world,..the grace & beauty of its engineered lines,..all dumped on the scrap heap to satisfy leech shareholders,...(which I personally believe was shot down by a snipers bullet on its last fateful crash)
Could anyone imagine any nation,..discovering & producing UFO space-craft anti-gravity flying technology,..
Then deciding no we won't use it,..lets go back to the horse & cart era of traveling slow
That what BA done to Concorde in my opinion
Its the same problem exists today over the car industry,..fast cars,..with good equipment, safety equipment (brakes tyres etc ,..)
The loony green party nutters wanting us to travel at horse & cart speeds,..with thousands of anti-speed bumps everywhere like a hideous cancer & blot on the landscape
- Virgin Flyer, uk, 19/03/2010 06:20
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Looks like an outbreak of informative impartiality here . . .
- Elliemae'S Grandad, London, 18/03/2010 16:15
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I wonder if the voters of Birmingham are so stupid that they will go like sheep to vote for a shoe-in?
- John Bell, Nottm UK, 17/03/2010 20:01
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"BA workers are not slaves to the union hierarchy: they are its masters. They should see sense — and just say no."
But the workers voted for a strike, in a legal, democratic ballot!
- William Campbell, London, 17/03/2010 18:47
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To those that lament that the Tory's are sponsored by big business, does not l am afraid make it right for liebour to be under the blankets, let alone in the same bed as a union, now run by Brown's former spin merchant.
- Terry, london, 17/03/2010 18:11
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It's very simple: a vote for Labour is a vote for the Unions.
- St, London, 17/03/2010 17:54
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Wheelan is a stiring conspiring westminster village pro who has massaged his way into the position he has. He knows even if booted out he is in the money and if he can be seen as a peace maker then his security of tenure is all the greater.
Liek Mandlesson he has delivered nothing over teh last 13 years and before for Labour save abuse the party's good will for their own benefit.
They aren't even movers amd shakers just pathetic bullies who seek to smother their audience with a veneer of genteel kindness whilst pulling the rug from underneath them at every turn.
Labour are damaged good who have lost the plot and will get justifiably whipped into oblivion in May.
Wheelan, Mandleson not forgetting Campbell and of no value to a party that needs to learn and rebuild what Kinnock, Blair and Brown have decimnated over the last 15 years.
The world is evolving but the evil cabal at the heart of Labour is going backwards. BA will not go under and will survive Wheelan and Unite have hot the wrong company and if sense can prevail will be booted out before May as should Campbell and Mandleson.
Labour might then have chance, ok a dogs chance but it will make the real fight which is not just on the future of UK plc, but on their inept handling of the economy worth voting in.
- Robert Marshall, LONDON, 17/03/2010 17:05
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Great to see the evening standard giving a balanced and unbiased politicaly driven report, well done, by the way are there any Tory MP's bieng sponsored by big business and banks? surely not .
- Brian, Wiltshire, 17/03/2010 16:58
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This is an internal dispute within Labour. The hard left are so convinced of their own point of view that they cannot see that the majority of the country won't stand for it.
This is their gift to Cameron, which is a shame. He needs to be forced to get his act together, not be given power for just poncing about.
- Eastender, London, 17/03/2010 16:41
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Makes Cash for Questions positivly tame - if not legal.
I despair
- Very Angry At Mp'S Expenses, Home Counties, 17/03/2010 13:59
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Instead of "under the influence" why don't they own up and say "in the gift of". It is the Rotten Boroughs all over again. Rotten Labour as well and hopefully the corpse will be wheeled away shortly.
- Coylum, Vancouver, Canada, 17/03/2010 13:32
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