{"id":499046,"date":"2023-01-12T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T06:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/?p=499046"},"modified":"2023-01-12T06:53:32","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T06:53:32","slug":"the-tories-anti-strike-bill-will-only-lead-to-even-greater-industrial-upheaval-martin-kettle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/news\/the-tories-anti-strike-bill-will-only-lead-to-even-greater-industrial-upheaval-martin-kettle","title":{"rendered":"The Tories&#8217; anti-strike bill will only lead to even greater industrial upheaval | Martin Kettle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Business secretary Grant Shapps introducing the strikes (minimum service levels) bill in Commons on Tuesday. Photograph: UK Parliament\/Jessica Taylor\/PA The political goals of the government&#8217;s new strikes (minimum service levels) bill , unveiled this week by Grant Shapps, the business secretary, are transparent. The bill picks an entirely avoidable fight with the trade unions. It does so for two main reasons, and neither has much to do with the need to bring the current industrial disputes to either a fair or an early end. The first reason is to rally a still fractious Tory party more firmly behind the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, through an act of explicitly Thatcherite homage. The second is the hope that the unions will overreact and that Labour &#8211; which was 21 points ahead in the polls at the start of 2023 &#8211; will be drawn in and damaged by association with an upsurge of militancy, thus slowing Keir Starmer&#8217;s march towards Downing Street. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This proposed legislation will do nothing to end the current disputes. Instead, its vagueness will give ministers dangerous new powers, says Guardian columnist Martin Kettle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omni48.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}