Britain is braced for a winter of strikes – yet a public backlash just hasn’t happened | Gaby Hinsliff

Support for public sector workers shows that most people realise the government's in the wrong, not exhausted nurses

Winter is suddenly here, and with it a chill descending. This Arctic snap brings with it the season of falls on icy pavements, breathing difficulties aggravated by the cold, cars skidding off frozen roads and drunken Christmas party casualties. The worst time of year, you might think, for the first ambulance strike since the 1980s and the first national nurses' strike in more than a century, especially as the NHS is grappling with a rush of parents understandably panicking about an outbreak of strep A.

The armed forces may be drafted in to cover, somewhat ironically given that they, too, are public sector workers who spent the pandemic building hospitals and shipping PPE in return for a less than bumper payrise. But it's still no time to be old and frail, worrying about what might happen if you slip on the stairs, or to be a family without a car, wondering how you'd get a child to hospital in the middle of the night.