London Mayor accuses Government of blame deflection over rail strikes

Sadiq Khan gave an angry reaction to suggestions that Labour has encouraged the strikes

LONDON Mayor Sadiq Khan has accused the Government of blame deflection over its handling of the rail strikes. 

Mr Khan criticised Ministers who are turning on Labour in the wake of reports the party has demanded MPs stay off picket lines. 

The Mayor said the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues were failing to properly deal with the crisis.

He told GB News: “So, this is classic deflection from Shapps, Sunak and Johnson. Labour is not the government. 

“So, the Labour Party, going on a picket line or not, makes not a jot of difference on the strikes today.

“These strikes are happening because the Government are not willing to meet with RMT nationally but are also attaching a huge amount of conditions leading to cuts in London and across the country. 

The Mayor added: “So what the Government tried to do is deflect and blame Labour. It is a red herring.

“The key thing is for the RMT sit down with the Government, the train companies, Network Rail, and resolve differences around the table rather than strikes

“Nobody wants strikes. I don’t want strikes, no one does.”

The Mayor’s comments came after Justine Greening urged the Government urgently formulate a plan to deal with strikes.

The former Transport Secretary warned that workers in other sectors are set to follow the example of the rail unions. 

Also speaking to GB News, Ms Greening said: “The disruption is going to be very bad for lots of people. As we’ve seen, the Government will end up needing to have a plan because it’s not just, by the sounds of it, going to be railway workers. 

“We’re seeing teachers talking about industrial action later in the year, even barristers.

“I’ve seen on social media people in the NHS saying we wish we had the chance to be able to go on strike, you know, we want a pay rise too.”

Speaking during an interview with Gloria De Piero, Ms Greening added that it looks like there will be a “bigger challenge” with strikes in the coming months.

She said: “I think there’s a broader discontentment around public sector workers and I think the Government is going to have to have a very clear strategy to deal with all of that over the coming period because I think dealing with it piecemeal, even if Grant Shapps sat down with railway workers, is not going to fix that bigger challenge.

“Let’s be honest, there are millions of people in our country right now being disrupted by the strikes, but also there are millions of people really worried about how they’re going to cope with the cost of living pressures in the months ahead.

“So fundamentally, I think the most important thing the Government can do is set out a really clear plan on how it’s going to tackle inflation because it’s inflation that is driving the demands for some of these wage rises that we’re seeing.”

Meanwhile Ms Greening, who is credited with inventing the phrase “levelling up”, said it was vital that the government follows through on its policy.

She said: “I wanted to come up with a phrase that in a sense was clear about what we were doing to achieve equality of opportunity…

“You achieve that not by taking opportunities away from people who’ve already got them but by levelling up and extending new opportunities to people who don’t and for me, that’s why the levelling up agenda really matters because it’s fundamentally about making access to opportunity far more fair in the future than it’s been in the past.”