The coalition faces its most important battle of the next five years

Strolling through central Birmingham yesterday, I came across one of those brewery advertisements from the early part of the last century. “Unspoilt by progress,” it boasted – a slogan that popped into my head when I heard the unions’ various interventions this morning. As Iain Dale suggests, there is something very 1970s about what Crow, Barber, Serwotka & Co. are saying today.

The coalition will need to meet much of the unions’ belligerence with some fire of its own. David outlined some ways it can do that earlier. But, to my mind, there is one charge that demands a particularly ferocious counterattack. It’s the one made by Brendan Barber in his article for the Independent today:

“Yesterday, the TUC published research showing that the cuts will fail the same fairness test as the poll tax. The poorest 10 per cent will lose 13 times more than the top 10 per cent from the cuts the coalition plan.”