Pity the British traveller looking for a few weeks in the foreign sun this year. Assuming they’ve got their passports back, assuming their flights aren’t cancelled, assuming they are able to get to an airport on a national rail strike day; there is now the probability that there’ll be no one on duty at Heathrow to check them in and get their luggage on board.
Then, if they’re unlucky, they will arrive at a European airport that directs them to an interminable queue at post-Brexit “third country” passport control. The glamour is certainly draining from the jet set.
Such is the growing tumult in industrial relations that life generally seems set to be disrupted on a scale not seen in decades. Maybe talk of a “summer of discontent” is overheated – days lost to strike action are unlikely to surpass the peaks seen in the winter of 1978-79 – but the disruption and unease will be widespread and more than inconvenient.
