It did sound like they might choke on the words. But ministers say they want to co-operate with the TUC to support workers during the job-killing virus crisis.
It’s been a very long time since Tory politicians could mouth “trade unions” without hissing through their teeth.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Business Secretary Alok Sharma and now Boris Johnson have managed to do it.
Is the Government finally coming to terms with real life?
The Trades Union Congress speaks for six million workers.
It demands a better deal for huge numbers facing no or inadequate sick pay, unpaid leave, redundancy and even eviction from their homes because of the coronavirus pandemic.
These people, across industry and the public services, keep the wheels of society turning, yet they were left out of the Treasury’s cash-tsunami for business.
Shifty Sharma insists help is coming “very soon” and the PM bleats “we will be working with the unions” on measures to alleviate hardship.
Apparently, they are looking at income protection measures, possibly modelled on Scandinavian lines where everybody gets a guaranteed wage. But it took a media outcry to make them act, exposing their change of heart as a hasty afterthought.
The Conservatives’ natural instinct is to back employers, not employees.
So much for the “worker friendly” image Boris Johnson likes to project.
He likes to think of himself as the Winston Churchill of our time.
But Winnie took the biggest union leader – Ernie Bevin of the TGWU – into his wartime Cabinet as Minister of Labour.
It was a spectacularly successful step, though I don’t think BoJo is minded to ask Ernie’s heir Len McCluskey to join him as Minister for the Workers.
But he should bring back Gordon Brown, if not in a National Council of War, then as a top adviser. He speaks for workers and people trust him.
Johnson should immediately adopt Gordon’s proposal that public money to shore up firms is conditional on protecting their workers’ jobs. "I think we have a package to go," the Prime Minister said last night.
Talks between the Chancellor and the TUC began yesterday. Long-term, this crisis could bring about real change, if the Tories grasp that they must value properly the contribution of working people and not just their employers.
