Petrol Paymaster Press Panic Plan

Daveybloke has moved swiftly to get his party's donors off the front pages with the time-honoured tactic of reciprocal accusation. Conservative policy may be as innocent of shady dealings as Francis Maude is innocent of the law on storing petrol in the home; but Labour, as always, are in hock to the unions, and the Government has very conveniently managed to provoke a possible strike by fuel tanker drivers. There is, of course, absolutely no justification for a strike; despite Daveybloke's belief that corporations should have the right to fire people in pursuit of profit, the idea that workers might have the right to withdraw their labour in pursuit of better conditions is the kind of thing that brokenised Britain to begin with. Accordingly, Daveybloke and two of his very brightest chums, Maude and Lady Warsi, have been rushing all over the place squeaking about precautions and stockpiling and emergency committee meetings and bringing in the army, just so that the spectre of a 1970s-style panic doesn't raise its unmarketised head. Warsi and Maude have been yapping at the Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband, urging him to condemn the remotest possibility of industrial action and blathering about conspiracies to bring the country grinding to a halt. The Upper (formerly Lower) Miliband burbled a few sweet nothings about avoiding strikes by getting round a table and negotiating, and duly ground to a halt.