Why does the BA strike matter? The plight of several thousand inconvenienced passengers for four days isn’t enough to propel it on to the front pages of every paper in the land. No, the real story is that of the key players in this dispute.
Step backwards Willie Walsh, we’re not talking about you. BA have been caught up in a titanic struggle between Old and New Labour. Squaring up to each other, Charlie Whelan the boss of Unite, and Lord Mandelson, famously ousted from power by Mr Whelan’s leaking of his mortgage arrangements to the press. Unite is now one of the few remaining unions in the UK, and Labour’s reliance on them is disproportionately huge.
So here we have two lumbering giants in communications – Gordon Brown’s previous Sultan of Spin Charlie Whelan locking horns with the Government’s current Spinmeister Lord Mandelson. Only one will win.
While they battle it out the wreckage strewn about includes BA, Willie Walsh, the Labour Party, oh and several thousand inconvenienced passengers. At least if it gets too much they can always try to escape to the sun…on EasyJet.
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