Well, I’m Shocked Again...

David Aaronovitch wades into the wildcat strikes row, pointing out that rent-a-mouth union leaders Derek Simpson (Unite) and Paul Kenny (GMB) proved strangely unable to prove their claims that UK workers had been discriminated against when pressed for clarification.

Facts notwithstanding, the Lindsey strike has brought a colonic flush of sentiment about how entitled the British are to their rage. Some of the country's leading commentators have enjoyed one of their occasional joyous moments of getting down and dirty with the workers. There has been nonsense about the slow patience of the English (“but when roused to ire... blah, blah”), about how we should be more like the French, whose utterly pointless national strike paralysed that country on Thursday, about how the ordinary man should blame the bankers, the EU, the Government, the quangocrats or anyone else.

Are any of those parties totally blameless, then, David?

From the Right and the Left the target was globalisation. Jon Cruddas, MP for Dagenham and the unofficial leader of Labour's centre Left lamented: “Britain is a country that no longer owns the productive processes that create its wealth. Crucial economic sectors have been handed over to unaccountable foreign ownership.” Note here the linking of “foreign” with “unaccountable”, as though the good old failing domestic companies used to invite us to vote on their expansion or contraction policies. Letting EU workers undercut British ones (as has certainly sometimes happened) had been, according to Mr Cruddas, “a race to the bottom”. Albeit one that, until recently, left us able to enjoy low unemployment and hugely expanded public services. You must have noticed the schools, John? Even in Dagenham.

Yes, I’m sure he has. I’m sure he’s also noticed how those ‘hugely expanded public services’ are unnecessary or unsustainable, with the increasing burden of public sector pensions to pay for.

And if he hasn’t noticed, you can bet an increasing majority of his constituents have...

On Sunday the Government, in the shape of Alan Johnson, panicked on the BBC. Well, sometimes you have to. Yesterday, in the shape of Lord Mandelson, it un-panicked again, also on the BBC. Well, usually that's better. John Humphrys pressed the case of the (hypothetical) Sunderland worker who is underwhelmed by the bigger argument against protectionism in jobs, or by hundreds of thousands of Britons occupying posts in other EU countries that could also, presumably at a pinch, be filled by locals.

Because telling someone who is out of work and unable to find employment that ‘Never mind, some other Britons are making out like bandits on the continent!’ is going to help, of course..

The answer, of course, is that temporarily satisfying Kenny Ward (or Carlo Wardi or Karl Wardowski) would lead to a stupid game of International Beggar My Neighbour, in which, far from guaranteeing jobs for British workers, or jobs for Italian workers, we would end up with even fewer jobs for both. Someone needs to tell them that truth up in Lincolnshire, because I don't think Derek Simpson will.

Derek Simpson fears for his job, and his union subs. He’s not going to tell them anything they don’t want to hear, David...