£65 grand for four days a week? Don't take us for fools

Deputy PM Oliver Dowden takes aim at the striking unions, the bigger Ulez and backs Susan Hall as excellent’ choice for Mayor

- Nicholas Cecil, Jitendra Joshi

BRITAIN’S Deputy Prime Minister today told rail workers set to inflict more strike misery on London and across the train network that their “jobs are on the line”.

In a forthright intervention, Oliver Dowden warned them, and the rail unions, that they should not take “Londoners and commuters for fools” as they could be pushed into “permanently adapting away from using the railways on a routine basis”.

This could plunge the rail industry into decline with the walkout days, already tipping London’s economy into the “doldrums”, threatening to undermine the capital as a “really top global city” if the industrial action is sustained longer term.

In an interview with the Standard ahead of the Tory annual rally in Manchester which starts on Sunday, Mr Dowden also:

⬤ Pushed the next election choice as between “energetic Sunak and staid Starmer”.

⬤ Appealed to Tory voters considering switching to the Liberal Democrats in the southern Blue Wall seats by arguing it would mean Sir Keir as PM and higher taxes.

⬤ Told how the Tories will go on the offensive to gain some seats in London and its commuter belt, including in Enfield and St Albans.

⬤ Denied a US presidential election coinciding with a British general election could destabilise the West amid the Ukraine war arguing that “strong, robust democratic institutions”, including elections, were a strength.

⬤ Told how as the minister overseeing Whitehall’s emergency Cobra system, his biggest strike worry was the combined walkouts by consultants and junior doctors which created a “dangerous” situation in the NHS.