When a government starts talking about bringing in the army to assist with maintaining public services, it is not, as some seem to believe, a sign of strength but a signal that things have spun badly out of control.
Sitting in the cosy BBC studios with Laura Kuenssberg, Nadhim Zahawi, multimillionaire hapless Tory chairman, must have thought he was reassuring people shivering in the cold that Britain is lucky to have a “great” Cobra team who even now are planning contingency plans for when the wave of strikes hit in the coming weeks.
Mr Zahawi, a former health secretary, likes to don the bedside manner of a hospital consultant reassuring his patient that things are well in hand. “So – whether it’s our military personnel that we’ve trained up, or a surge capacity – that we can actually make sure things like borders are safe and protected, and of course, people’s lives are not disrupted.”
