MAIL COMMENT: Strike bullies expose ministerial weakness

By Daily Mail Comment
Updated: 03:03 EST, 25 November 2011

Prediction: Francis Maude believes Wednesday's 'day of action' will cost the fragile economy £500million

Prediction: Francis Maude believes Wednesday's 'day of action' will cost the fragile economy £500million

With only days to go until millions of state workers go on strike, ministers are belatedly realising they have a potential debacle on their hands.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office Minister in charge of negotiations with the unions, is predicting next Wednesday’s ‘day of action’ over modest reforms to public sector pensions will cost the fragile economy £500million.

Meanwhile, his colleagues only now seem to be waking up to the fact they are going to need people to feed the elderly and sick and guard our borders (a task which, even on non-strike days, Whitehall and Westminster have shown themselves pathetically incapable of doing).

Of course, the real culprits are the union leaders, who — like the antediluvian monsters they are — refuse to accept that an ageing population and the dire state of the national finances make public sector pension reform unavoidable.

Indeed, one of the growing scandals of 21st century Britain is how, on average, the public sector is both better paid and better pensioned than a private sector on whose shoulders alone rests the awesome task of dragging the UK out of recession.

Nor can Ed Miliband, who has refused to condemn the unions, escape his share of the blame for the strike going ahead.

But the brutal truth is that ministers — hamstrung by a fear of being considered ‘anti-union’ by the BBC and the usual disagreements between the different halves of the Coalition pantomime horse —  have played a very bad hand.

In a move that revealed terrible weakness, they have said they will leave their generous pension offer on the table until the end of the year even if the strike takes place — giving the union barons carte blanche to do as they please.

Worse, Mr Maude — the wettest of wet Tories — failed to heed the many warnings that, if Britain is not to be held to ransom by a small number of hard-left bullies, it must pass laws insisting on a minimum turnout for a strike ballot to be valid.

The result is that next week operations will be cancelled and schools shut on the say-so of fewer than a third of union members — the rest of whom either voted No or didn’t bother to take part at all.

What a sorry state of affairs.

 

A brighter future?

New direction: Education Secretary Michael Gove has pledged a massive overhaul of the education system

New direction: Education Secretary Michael Gove has pledged a massive overhaul of the education system

It's nothing less than a national disgrace that — while bright, hard-working migrants fill thousands of British jobs and university places — there are 1.16million of our own young people not in employment, education or training.

Tragically, these so-called NEETs have been failed by an education system which, under Labour, slipped shamefully down the international league tables in literacy, science and maths.

Mediocrity was enshrined in a system seemingly designed to stifle healthy competition. Exams were relentlessly dumbed-down to mask a decline in both discipline and standards.

Yet, against this deeply depressing backdrop, Education Secretary Michael Gove’s promise to restore an ‘unashamedly elitist’ approach in our schools offers hope for a brighter future.

In a passionate speech at Cambridge University, the increasingly impressive Mr Gove rightly said the poverty of ambition in state education would have ‘appalled our Victorian ancestors’, and pledged the return of rigorous academic curricula in neglected subjects such as history and English literature.

Passionate: Mr Gove rightly said the poverty of ambition in state education would have 'appalled our Victorian ancestors'

Passionate: Mr Gove rightly said the poverty of ambition in state education would have 'appalled our Victorian ancestors'

Mr Gove hopes to achieve his revolution through academy and free schools which, like the few remaining grammar schools, are free from progressive dogma and able to promote excellence.

We wish him luck in overcoming a Left-wing education establishment which, by insisting that no one can be allowed to fail, ensures no one really succeeds.