Last Resorts

After Francis Maude's dismal performance last week, during which he rebuked the unions for harming their members when the Government can harm them so much more efficiently, Daveybloke's Cuddly Coalition has been forced to the desperate measure of loosening the gag on Michael Gove. Ironically enough, Gove seems to have taken his cue from Francis Maude: "if schools aren't open on Thursday there will be massive inconvenience for working parents, in particular single parents, who will have to rearrange childcare at very short notice," he twittered. As a cabinet colleague of Daveybloke, who wanted to offer petty bribes to make couples stay together, and of Iain Duncan Smith, who views welfare benefits as an instrument of jihad for the sanctity of marriage, Gove knows whereof he speaks when it comes to inconveniencing single parents.

Gove also worried "that taking industrial action, being on the picket line, being involved in this sort of militancy will actually mean that the respect in which teachers should be held is taken back a little bit", since the public, who gave the party of Michael Gove such a thumping majority at the last election, will clearly fail to sympathise with people who withdraw their labour just because their pensions are being plundered. Gove twittered further that "you don't see hospital consultants going on strike and I don't believe teachers and headteachers should"; apparently the pay scales and working conditions for teachers and hospital consultants are somehow meaningfully comparable, although unfortunately it seems that Gove was not permitted to dig himself any deeper on the issue.

For the Opposition, the Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair said he was in favour of strong trade unions provided they did as they were told, and the Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband said that "strikes must always be the very last resort"; for best results, presumably, one should wait until after one's job has been taken away.