This article is an on-site version of our Inside Politics newsletter. Subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. If you’re not a subscriber, you can still receive the newsletter free for 30 daysGood morning. The Labour government has experienced its first political setback.Ministers hailed its pay offer to the train drivers’ union Aslef last week as an agreement that would bring an end to the rail strikes that have been a frequent nuisance in recent years. That was followed by news on Friday of a further strike on the railways by, uh, Aslef. To add to the government’s embarrassment, the new dispute is with LNER, the part of the UK’s national network that is already government-run, so it invites criticism of Labour’s plans to renationalise the rest of the railways. Although the latter strike concerns a dispute over working conditions with LNER, rather than another row over pay, it is of course embarrassing to the Labour government. Ministers argue that in signing these pay deals, they are easing both strikes and the recruitment crisis facing many parts of the British state. The Conservatives argue that what they are doing is guaranteeing higher salary bills for the taxpayer and further strikes. Some thoughts on that below. Thanks for sending your questions so far for the Inside Politics Q&A email on Friday. Please get your submissions in (with your name and city/county) by Wednesday lunchtime.Inside Politics is edited by Georgina Quach. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.comTaking the Mick?One of Margaret Thatcher’s first acts as prime minister was to sign off a series of bumper pay deals for public sector workers. (I am grateful to David Higham, a former civil servant in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, for finding the exact figures on Bluesky.) Her rationale was simple: the first thing she needed to do was demonstrate that her government’s actions would immediately lead to fewer strikes than the Labour government it succeeded, and to give her administration the breathing space it needed to change legislation to weaken the power of the trade unions. In this she was immediately successful. In 1979 there were 29.5mn days lost to strikes in the UK. In 1980, before essentially all of the significant trade union legislation passed by Thatcher had been on the statute book, it had dropped to 11.9mn. Now, the challenge that Thatcher faced in 1979 was profoundly different to the one that Keir Starmer has in 2024. (And, of course, so are their respective governing projects.) One manifestation of that is that while Rishi Sunak’s government was presiding over a 34-year high in the number of days lost to strikes, it was, by the standards of the 1980s, a year of remarkable industrial quiet. The other difference is that in 2024, recruitment and retention of public sector workers are big problems for the condition of the public services, which they weren’t in 1979. The UK does not recruit enough teachers. The NHS workforce is grappling not only with the impact of strikes but also the loss of doctors and nurses to the rest of the English-speaking world. But there are important similarities. Starmer is, I think, correct to believe that the most important thing for him right now is to demonstrate that the new Labour government is a swift change from the last one, and to immediately reduce the amount and frequency of disruption across the public realm. The other important similarity is that no one will mind how Starmer’s government started its life as long as it delivers on voters’ expectations. I am open to suggestions about how to resolve the UK’s challenge of recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of teachers, doctors and nurses without addressing the reality that their pay has declined in relative terms (see chart), but none immediately springs to mind this morning. You are seeing a snapshot of an interactive graphic. This is most likely due to being offline or JavaScript being disabled in your browser.Unlike Starmer in 2024, Thatcher had a clear plan to reduce the number of strikes in the UK. The Labour party’s plans may actually increase them, not so much because of its proposals to change how the UK’s labour market works (Thatcher-era legislation will be essentially unchanged by what is proposed) but because of its own public sector reform agenda.In choosing to make these pay settlements now, coupled with their self-denying promises on tax, Labour is betting heavily that a combination of higher wages for public sector workers and reform of public service delivery will secure improvements — because almost all of any additional money chancellor Rachel Reeves finds to fund public services is going to be taken up by pay claims. Now, the thing about public service reform is it almost always involves some disruption and a degree of dispute with public sector workers about the systematic changes you are making. In that way, Aslef’s on-again, off-again strikes are possibly prophetic, in that a dispute over pay has been resolved, but one over conditions has just begun. A government that badly needs to show people that public services are improving under its watch is going to be at great risk that “strikes over pay” give way to “strikes over reform”. Now try thisI cooked this delicious Nigella Lawson roast chicken recipe for the first time this weekend and it was among the best meals I have ever eaten in my own home. I like to cook a big, more labour-intensive meal on Sunday evening, as it means my partner can have the leftovers when she gets home from work on Mondays (when I am usually at the cinema) or Tuesdays (when I am usually at my D&D group). Please send me your favourites! Top stories todayOperation Early Dawn | The UK government will hold offenders in police station cells as it said strains on prison capacity had reached a “crisis” following violent unrest across the country in recent weeks.This Suella was made for talking | Former home secretary Suella Braverman has raked in nearly £60,000 making speeches in India, South Korea and elsewhere around the world, the highest of any sitting MP.Birmingham council bankruptcy | Audit group Grant Thornton, Birmingham council and the past Tory government all have “serious questions to answer” over their response to the financial collapse of the UK local authority last year, according to an investigation by forensic accountants at Sheffield University.Reverse gear | More than three-quarters of UK driving exam centres still have waiting times above three months despite attempts to cut the post-pandemic backlog by releasing 150,000 extra slots.Popular, I know about popular | Tory leadership contender James Cleverly would beat all of his rivals as the preferred candidate among Conservative members, according to a new poll by Techne UK, which forecast the last Conservative Party leadership contest the most accurately. Priti Patel is the second most popular, as the Times’ Matt Dathan reports. Recommended newsletters for youUS Election Countdown — Money and politics in the race for the White House. Sign up hereFT Opinion — Insights and judgments from top commentators. Sign up here
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