Rishi Sunak is a hyper-aware, even self-conscious prime minister. Since taking post in October, he has worked assiduously to present a “slick” image to the media, undertaken multiple U-turns to halt backbench rebellions and tried at every turn to position himself positively against Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer.
The tricky technocrat in No 10 is obsessed with good press. It is an approach that bares stark contrast to the days of Liz Truss, who showed little concern for how her policies might be received amid her deeply misguided ideological crusade. Unlike his predecessor, therefore, you can take for granted that when Sunak announces a new policy, there will be a hefty amount of calculated politicking involved.
In this way, November’s Autumn Statement was strategically orientated to exploit traditional Conservative strengths and traditional Labour weaknesses. Sir Keir, ever-keen to present Labour as a responsible party after the Cobrynite experiment, was challenged to disagree with Sunak’s proposals. In the end, Labour’s inability to sign up wholeheartedly to the new fiscal orthodoxy exposed, in chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s analysis, a deficit of common sense in Labour ranks.
When it comes to the government’s new anti-strike bill, the political thinking is essentially the same.
Setting a trap…
The new anti-strike legislation was introduced to the House on Tuesday by business secretary Grant Shapps. Citing risks posed to NHS patients, Shapps outlined that the new bill would require public sector services to run minimum levels of provision on strike days — essentially forcing a certain proportion of an industry to work or face the sack.
The move harks back to a “golden age” of Conservative power over industrial relations. Ever since Margaret Thatcher defeated the miners and other unions in the 1980s, Conservatives have viewed strikes as a way to make their party look tough and discredit the Labour Party alongside the wider left.
To be sure, we have already seen Starmer encounter some political difficulty in this latest wave of industrial action. In the summer, he chose to sack one-time frontbencher Sam Tarry for standing alongside picketing workers. For the Labour leader — intent on distancing his party from the unions — Tarry had crossed a very literal red line.
But even if Starmer wants to downplay the connection, there is no escaping the fact that the Labour party is associated politically and financially with the trade union movement.
With the new anti-strike legislation, therefore, Sunak hopes to implicate Labour in an upsurge of union militancy, thus slowing Starmer’s inexorable march towards Downing Street.
It was telling that ministers chose to announce the new strike legislation within hours of the Labour leader’s “New year, New Vision” speech last week. Shapps’ pledge stole Starmer’s limelight and Labour’s newly announced “take back control bill” secured a grand total of zero newspaper front pages the following day.
The politics of the new legislation also dominated Starmer’s post-speech press conference. Under a barrage of questioning, the Labour leader confirmed that his party will vote against the plans and repeal the Act if he takes power at the next election.
It was all going to plan for Sunak. He had goaded Starmer out of hiding and forced the Labour leader to share an ideological platform with that favourite Conservative bogeyman: the so-called union “baron”. The PMQs’ attack lines wrote themselves.
However, few would deny that the prime minister is playing a high-stakes political game with his new anti-strike bill. Although Starmer’s reaction could be accounted for, the government risks running into a hostile public backlash. Now a week on from when the legislation was announced, and many view the new proposals as needlessly and deliberately obstructive.
Risk 1: The government is viewed as needlessly obstructive
Although Conservative MPs imagine Mick Lynch as the new Arthur Scargill, the infamous union “baron” who led opposition to Margaret Thatcher, the general public is not so convinced. Instead, the political posturing around the new anti-strike bill may be viewed as deepening the industrial relations crisis and prolonging our winter of discontent.
Furthermore, the new bills’ parliamentary progress is set to be slow, with a difficult House of Lords stage beckoning. And when/if the bill does eventually pass, its key provisions will unquestionably be tested in the courts before they can take effect, just as is the case with deportations to Rwanda.
So with the proposed legislation unlikely to do anything to solve urgent disputes, the public may well wonder want the point is at all — if not to be deliberately coercive and punitive.
Risk 2: Labour exploits support for striking nurses
Another risk for Sunak is that by focussing on risks posed to NHS patients during the strikes, he ventures onto territory where the Labour Party is traditionally at its strongest.
It is telling that Starmer has focused his attacks on the part of the bill which would allow employers to sack workers who defy a “work notice” by striking. At PMQs on Wednesday, Starmer accused the government of going from “clapping the nurses to sacking the nurses”. On Thursday came a new widely-shared graphic by order of Labour Party HQ, which accused Sunak of planning to give striking nurses “the finger”, Alan Sugar-style.
This attack line works because it is not very far from the truth. As a result of the proposed law, individual nurses could be prosecuted and even jailed. These are the same people Sunak was pictured clapping for, as chancellor, throughout the pandemic.
Risk 3: Sunak is viewed as a rigid, uncompromising ideologue
Sunak’s desire to be seen as pragmatic and “reasonable” may be fundamentally undermined by the passage of this bill.
In pursuing the new legislation, Sunak has abandoned his “managerialism” and political prudence, territory where the risk-averse Starmer is comfortable, in order to set up a battle over principles, territory where Starmer is not. Honing in on fundamental Labour-Conservative differences in a bid to exploit the Labour leader’s risk-averse nature, Sunak hence risks exposing the worst aspects of Conservative ideology.
While the prime minister may point to a more conciliatory tone in negotiations, there is no hiding that the new law is an act of explicitly Thatcherite homage. It is as provocative and divisive as much as practically possible, drawing on Conservatism’s collective memory of disputes in the 1980s.
However, you cannot help but think that in picking a fight with NHS nurses, Sunak has chosen the wrong moment to abandon his “problem-solving” priorities and get dug in with Conservative dogma. One recent YouGov poll found that 64% of the public support the striking nurses.
Rather than introducing anti-strike legislation, therefore, Sunak’s political future may be better served by getting around the negotiating table and constructively ending the industrial dispute once and for all.
So with imagery of nurses in handcuffs circling — and with ordinary Britons desperate for some degree of normalcy to return, Sunak’s attempt to trap Starmer on strikes looks destined to fail.
