Tube Strikes

It's tube strike time again and no one is exactly sure what the unions are striking about, not even the unions themselves. Is it redundancies or ticket offices or...frankly who cares? The net effect is that millions of commuters have a miserable journey to work, if they can make it at all. I imagine some will be humming the London Underground song, where the singer imagines shooting every single LU employee with a 'f**king rifle'.

London Undergound Song

Now I personally think that's a somewhat extreme solution to this industrial dispute, not least because one of the victims would be the red mohican-sporting man who works at Oxford Circus - and he for one is a charming fellow. But the problem remains that tube workers, often a minority of those workers, have the potential to inflict £100 millions of damage to the  capital's economy more or less at will.

I've lived in London for nearly 40 years and can remember many, many tube strikes. They all sound, look and feel exactly the same (well apart from some questionable suits worn in the early 90s): irate union bosses blaming management, management blaming unions, massive queues of irate and tired travellers outside train stations.

The problem remains that the tube unions have an uniquely powerful negotiating position. When they go on strike, their members lose a few days' pay. London's business and workers, however, suffer much more. At the end of the strike, there's a good chance that the union will have extracted extra concessions or payments to offset the loss of earnings.

In other words, it makes sense for the unions to strike on a regular basis and it is cheaper to buy them off than to stand up to their demands. This is certainly the calculation that successive managers of the Underground have made - dealing once and for with the unions is just not worth the grief.

You'll notice that I've skated over the specifics of this strike, which are about voluntary redundancies and the closure of ticket offices...apparently. It's got nothing to do with an internal power struggle at the RMT following the death of Bob Crow, nothing whatsoever. Yeah, right.

To me there is a more general issue about modernisation, to which the tube unions seem axiomatically opposed. To take one example: the advent of Oyster cards reduces the need to have a person behind a ticket counter at every station. New technology has made that role in some cases redundant. That doesn't mean stations will be left unattended, just that there won't be somebody twiddling his or her thumbs behind a ticket counter that is almost never used.

The other big step in modernisation, which is already part underway, is to automate the trains themselves - making them driverless. Before you recoil in horror, just think about the following: automated trains are never late for work, never call in sick (unauthorised absenteeism accounts for around 10% of delays), they never drink on duty, never fall asleep, react faster and always drive at the optimum speed. They are more reliable, cheaper and safer. There is also one clincher for automation, it means a driver will not have to witness someone hurling themselves under a train.

Redundancy is always reported as a negative outcome. But thanks to technological progress many unpleasant and dangerous jobs have become redundant, from cotton pickers to chimney sweeps. Driving tube train no matter well paid, is a lonely, isolating and depressing job where statistically you are likely to see somebody commit suicide.

The tube unions are always against any changes to the status quo, no matter how small. That is no way to run a railway; technology allows us to achieve the same or better outcomes for less money and fewer people. Progress in other words.

The unions could behave differently, they could co-operate and compromise but there's nothing in it for them. It seems to me that the only way we can achieve real change on the Underground is to ban strikes altogether. There, I said it.  Otherwise, get used to strikes for the foreseeable future.

Protest Parties

After two live TV debates between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage, the instant poll gave Farage a resounding victory with 69% to Clegg's 31%. You may loathe UKIP and their leader, you may believe their party members contain a worrying number of oddballs, cranks and racists, but you cannot deny that Farage and co. are upsetting the cosy Westminster consensus. Relax, this blog is not going to sing the praises of UKIP, there are enough pub bores across the land, who own every Top Gear DVD and book by Richard Littlejohn, to rant about Britain being swamped and PC gawn mad.

But the growth of a protest party from a fringe group to 12% support in the opinion polls has changed the dynamic of the upcoming election. On current trends, it seems likely the Tory party will lose and Labour could gain a slender majority. With the economy returning to strong growth, the deficit and unemployment down, these trends ought to benefit the government.
Historically, the British electorate has tended to adopt a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' mode of voting. Coalition politics does complicate matters, yet the basic pattern has been that the main party in power ought to benefit from positive economic news. Instead, the Conservatives' poll ratings remain stubbornly low at 32%.

The strange thing about the UKIP phenomenon is that it has improved Ed Miliband's chances of winning the election. I know, ridiculous isn't it? Miliband is by far the worse Labour leader of modern times, making Michael Foot seem positively statesmanlike. The party is being lead by the human equivalent of quiche and not even a tasty quiche either. In my mind, he's a broccoli flavoured- something nobody willingly orders unless, for example, they are a vegetarian and it is the only menu option. So your average UKIP voter, who ought to be on the right-wing fringe of the Tory party, would rather vote UKIP, split the Tory vote and increase Labour's chances of winning. Perhaps most people don't make these kind of calculations, but if you are sufficiently anti-EU and anti-immigration to consider voting UKIP, you must also be aware that Labour and the Lib-Dems are pro-Europeans.

In effect, UKIP voters are self-harming which begs the question why? One possible answer is that aren't very bright. Judging by some of their candidates and voters, that's possibly true. However they can't all be idiots. I suppose it's possible, but it's more likely that their ranks include rational, intelligent individuals, than the stupidest 12% of the population. People that dense probably haven't heard of the EU and even if they have, they think it's something you catch from loo seats (hang on, that could include UKIP voters). Anyway, you get the point.

I think the answer for UKIP's rise lies in the style of modern politics and in particular David Cameron's approach to government. Ask many people who you would rather have a drink with, Cameron or Farage and I reckon most, including left-wingers, would say Farage. If Miliband is a human quiche,  Cameron is the physical embodiment of a Coldplay song. Inoffensive background music that excites little emotion good or bad. If he were a colour, it would be fawn. Yet he manages to combine the essence of fawn, with a curious lack of awareness of the wider world.

Filling your cabinet with Old Etonians and public school boys looks wrong to the vast majority of people not born into privilege. Refusing to participate in a live debate in Farage plays badly. Rejecting an electorate pact with UKIP, where will not field candidates against Eurosceptic candidates is perverse. Put simply, he does not have the common touch or seem to understand that it's necessary. Margaret Thatcher, with her huge coiffeur, twin set and pearls, was hardly a natural working class hero. Nonetheless she seemed to speak a language that resonated with many.

If Cameron, Clegg or Miliband want to combat the rise of the protest vote, they need to start talking and acting like human beings, not automata. We don't need our leaders to be average, we do need them to have a pulse and minds of their own. Say what you like about Farage, he's not bland. And there will be more Farages to follow if the Westminster elite does not change their ways.