Downing Street's statement that Danny Alexander's statement on the future of public sector pensions are only proposals rather than definitive is disturbing.
The coalition government set off at a brisk trot in May 2010 on a mission to tackle the spiralling national debt caused by annual government overspending and borrowings to cover it . They also promised to take quick action on whole host of other items ignored, neglected or just got wrong in the 13 years of Blair and Brown administration,- one hesitates to say leadership. The medicine looked bitter but the need for it was understood and with five years to go until the next election the new leaders could afford to ride out any unpopularity.
The pace of intention, if not delivery, continued until a sudden recent bout of skidding and swerving around the road .Let's avoid the emotive, media beloved phrase U-turns .There is no problem with a change or two when a fresh new inexperienced government discovers unexpected potholes or a better ways forward. That's fine so long as the overall forward impetus and clear direction continues and reverse gear is not engaged. Over these last few weeks though there has been a strange loss of confidence and apparent determination behind the wheel. Cameron's jaw has looked less firmly set and some mistakes have crept in as has some dismay amongst observers.
Of all mistakes a leader can make , a visible loss of self confidence is the most serious. Supporters will follow a determined one through thick and thin but the moment he or she apears to waver, show doubts, indulge in self- questioning ,lack of impetus or even fatigue ,that support is threatened. Supporters don't like vulnerability not least because it means they risk being left out on a limb and looking stupid.
Danny Alexander set out the pensions case very clearly and accurately. It is not complicated and will be very familiar to many in the private sector who have already had to accept similar new arrangements though with the added risk that their own funding is not guaranteed by the state. Of course the unions will huff and puff. That is both their job and in their self interest. Their own financial survival depends on public sector employees,- and there being as many of them as possible. Whether the huffing and puffing, even to the extent of widespread strikes (which the employees themselves could not live with for long), has any power depends entirely on the Government response to it. Show weakness, allow protracted "negotiations", susceptability to expensive and unaffordable compromises and the unions have leverage. Avoid all those things and they have hardly any. Harold Wilson's beer and sandwiches at Number 10 was a disaster. Particularly when you have a winning hand as the government now has on the pensions issue the recipe is simply to deny the unions the oxygen and the ability to pretend to their members that industrial action has a chance of success. It will also ultimately help them to realise that their own only long term hope of relevance and survival is to totally rethink their role and how they go about being part of the redesign of the new global world of work and competition rather than the vain defender of one very protected and localised bit of it that has really disappeared.
New governments and new managments in business organisations are always very vulnerable to industrial realtions fun and games in their early days. The union professionals have been in the same game for many years, fought many battles and in some cases have aquired battle reputations of which they are very proud- and find very useful. For a green adversary they even look scary and it is easy to be persuaded that under this unwelcome stress it is safer to seek "Peace in our Time" and to withdraw than press on. It looks very much as if Downing Street may be in this mode at the moment and thereby it risks snatching defeat from the jaws of essential victory. OK, the forrests have been saved,(that was probably a battle never worth fighting anyway) but absolutely crucial NHS reforms look like being at best watered down to quarter strength (ask a panel with a majority uninterested in change for advice and what did they expect the answers to be?), but the public sector pensions issue is now the big one .Retreat would simply say the government has lost its nerve and all of its brave new world just isn't going to happen. If so why elect them next time round?
