This firemen’s strike is a climacteric moment for Tony Blair’s government

Tony Blair has been a lucky Prime Minister. Never in his first six years in office has he had to confront the co-ordinated industrial unrest which bedevilled Harold Wilson and destroyed Jim Callaghan. When he entered No. 10 in 1997, Blair found the unions in a state of cowed irrelevance: one of the many legacies of Margaret Thatcher for which the Prime Minister has never expressed gratitude.

Since 1997 the Prime Minister has set about restoring the morale of trade unionists. Many of the Thatcherite reforms have been reversed, while union leaders are now welcome in Downing Street. For the last two years the Prime Minister has enjoyed boasting, though only while in select company, that public-sector pay is now rising faster than private wages.

The strike rate has rapidly increased. In 1997, 236,000 days were lost to industrial action. The figure for the first nine months of this year alone stands at 800,000.