Author Archives: Dominic Mantle

Opinion: Cable’s GMB speech encapsulated coalition tensions

The Business Secretary Vince Cable’s speech to the GMB annual conference last Monday received significant attention. Some media coverage would have us believe that the senior Lib Dem had brazenly threatened trades unions with serious curbs on their strike powers. In fact, Cable had qualified his brief hint of this possibility with the admission that present circumstances merited no government action.

Within the context of unions’ criticism of government cuts to jobs and services, Cable’s introduction to the table of the possibility of changes to strike law may have been a strategic manoeuvre intended to dissuade industrial action planned

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged , and | 13 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • expats
    Tristan Ward 16th Aug '26 - 3:14pm... 'Treated water", i.e. water that comes from your tap, throughout Europe and the UK is, almost always, safe to drink.. ...
  • Jana
    “ Trump’s approval rating has never topped 50 percent.” Sorry but most opinion polls in January and February 2025 had Trump over 50% approval with a Yo...
  • Judy Abel
    @Tristan I am sorry but while privatisation may not automatically lead to poor water quality it certainly has in the UK. I’ve been to Italy and Denmark recent...
  • Tristan Ward
    @Judy Abel The suggestion that privatisation automatically leads to poor water quality is not supported by the facts. Most of continental Europe has poor ...
  • Judy Abel
    @John Indeed. At the very least we need to develop policies/guardrails on foreign investment in essential UK utilities to protect consumers and the viability of...