WELL the Tories are back then.
I don't refer to the first Conservative party budget for 19 years which has improved the lot of people whose elderly parents are living in £1 million houses.
Or its attendant welfare reform measures which appears to seek to restrict families of more than two children to the wealthy (Tory voters?), and ensure that low income parents lucky enough to have children will see much less of them as they'll be forced to work longer hours.
Or even the trade union bill, unveiled this very week, which is the biggest crackdown on workforce organisation in 30 years.
Although, yeah, that.
No, I'm talking about the manner of their delivery of devastating blows, or "hard economic decisions" to use the vernacular preferred by David Cameron and his Bullingdon Club cronies.
The choreographing of the Trade Unions Bill has been a masterclass of spin by the party of Saatchi and Saatchi.
The advertising agency was integrally associated with the Tory Party of old and in particular the three successive electoral victories of Margaret Thatcher.
The Saatchi brothers' brilliance was to "reduce campaigns to a simple, logical flow, using the simplest of words and as few of them as possible".
Even as Cameron and his chancellor George Osborne wept salty tears at Mrs Thatcher's funeral they must have been comforted by the knowledge that that particular legacy had not died with her, but was merely waiting for the right conditions - a Conservative majority - to re-emerge and sweep all before it.
And so we had the most elegant of build-ups to the legislation.
First, the Prime Minister reframed the old argument of right versus left by declaring that his was "the real party of working people" - one of those textbook "simple ideas" that each Tory MP has faithfully trotted out at every opportunity ("Oh, you dropped your hat? We are proud to be known as the real party of working people...").
Now what the government really needed was a disruptive strike to whip up anti-union feeling and pave the way for draconian restrictions to trade union rights.
And lo and behold, would you believe it, those 'commie' tube drivers, like the apocryphal turkeys casting their ballot for Christmas, decided to launch a vexatious stoppage, bringing London to a shuddering halt for days.
Divine intervention? Not quite.
According to trade union Aslef, the employers only put their offer on the table at 2.30pm on the Monday and withdrew it at 6.30pm.
The four-hour window did not leave enough time for its negotiators to put the offer to members, leading some to the conclusion it was “designed to be turned down”.
This is denied by the employers. Who are Transport for London, an executive agency within Greater London Authority.
While not central government, its chairman is mayor of London and Conservative MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson.
The next phase was to ratchet up the public outrage, which the Tory press obligingly did, with stories highlighting the disparity between the starting salary of tube drivers and nurses - omitting to mention the lack of career progression of the former versus the latter in order to cynically pit one worker against another.
That tactic is the second "simple idea" currently being promulgated by the parade of ministers trotted out to sell the need for trade union reform by patiently explaining and re-explaining that strikers (bad workers) can't be allowed to keep "hard-working people" (good workers) from going about their business.
Classic divide and conquer tactics, classic for a reason - because they are effective. Who wants to spend three hours waiting for public transport? Or take a day's leave to look after your off-spring because their teacher is on strike? Especially when they're already getting the pension you're not?
If you can get people to focus on their own discomfort, problems and, yes bitterness, then you can distract them from other people's.
From the tube drivers facing 24 hour rotas meaning those who were on mornings, days and evenings are now forced to work all night, with no choice but for the same pay. From healthcare workers under so much pressure and pushed to breaking point they fear for your safety. From teachers struggling to find the resources to teach your children.
You don't have to buy what they're selling. Especially if it's not as advertised, from a government whose very legitimacy would be denied if it was subjected to the same rules it is proposing for trade unions.
b.archer@irishnews.com
@BimpeIN
