Date:27/04/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/04/27/stories/2008042756291600.htm

International

It will be a “summer of discontent,” Brown warned

Hasan Suroor

New poll gives Tories unassailable 18-point lead

LONDON: Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has been stumbling from one crisis into another since he moved into Downing Street less than 10 months ago and who is already regarded as the weakest British Prime Minister of recent times, is facing a fresh challenge after leading trade unions warned of a long and torrid summer of discontent over public sector pay disputes.

The warning came soon after thousands of school teachers, demanding above-inflation pay rise, walked out of their classrooms in the first teachers’ strike in 21 years. Even as teachers threatened further strikes, more than a million workers across the public sector, including health and postal services, were contemplating industrial action to press for higher wages.

“The government has to act quickly to stem unrest,” warned Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), a Labour-affiliated body, echoing the warning by at least three other major unions, all ironically aligned to the Labour Party.

The threat of a long summer of industrial unrest prompted comparisons with the calamitous “winter of discontent” of 1978-79, which led to the defeat of the then Labour government of James Callaghan.

Commentators speculated whether history was set to repeat itself with Mr. Brown going the way of Callaghan as a new poll showed that the Tories had secured an unassailable 18-point lead over the Labour Party — their biggest lead in 20 years.

This meant that if elections were to be held “tomorrow,” the Labour Party would lose. Mr. Brown’s own popularity, which has been steadily slipping, slumped to an all-time low with only 19 per cent of the voters backing him. “No gloomier poll from Labour’s point of view has been published since Michael Foot led the party … in the early 1980s,” commented Professor Anthony King of Essex University.

The Labour Party admitted that this was bad news ahead of next week’s local elections, the first real electoral test of Mr. Brown’s leadership. There was much speculation that a bad result could spark a search for a new leader, but his supporters insisted that he remained “determined” and “focussed.”