The Guardian view on public sector pay: Labour needs an answer | Editorial

The opposition should be clearer about its own solutions to disputes that the government is shamefully trying to prolong

It is perverse, but seemingly true, that Britain's current industrial disputes over pay and jobs are causing more problems for the Labour opposition than they are for the Conservative government. There was a telling example on Wednesday, when Keir Starmer sacked an obscure junior shadow minister, Sam Tarry, for making media appearances on a rail workers' picket line. The action generated more heat and headlines than anything triggered by Liz Truss's belligerent pledge this week to impose new legal restrictions on public sector strike action, or Grant Shapps' instant plan of 16 different measures that would emasculate unions' rights to strike at all.

There are several lessons here, but the main one is that the Conservatives are not being held to proper account for the spiralling effects of the squeeze on living standards over which they are presiding. They, not Labour, are the government. They, not Labour, set public sector pay policy. They have the formal power to change public finance rules. They also have the informal authority to bring pressure on the two sides to negotiate a settlement. As guardians of the public interest, if nothing else, the government should also avoid unnecessarily provoking the dispute or becoming a protagonist.