He would have been quicker to dissipate his golden Tory legacy had he not committed himself to Kenneth Clarke's Conservative spending limits for his first two years and had he and Tony Blair allowed the trade union strike genie out of its bottle.

Now, with the economy in a mess and Labour virtually bankrupt as a party, the unions, as its financiers, are trying to call the tune. They have come together to present 130 demands ranging from permitting supportive strike action to free NHS prescriptions all over the UK. To be precise, they have tabled 130 amendments to proposals for inclusion in the next general election manifesto for the party's national policy forum that meets later this week. They have also clarified their priorities by grading their aims core, primary and secondary.

Clearly, they mean to kick their man – the Prime Minister – when he is down – and all the more so since he has characterised some of their ideas as a return to the 1970s. Brown can still recognise a time bomb when he sees one.

To this old labour correspondent, the unions' wish list is a familiar calculated blend of self-interest, total disregard for affordability and jobs, and their enthusiasm for Labour trying to bribe the electorate with its own money. They have always thought that brass grew on trees and were never unduly concerned about inflation because it made for big pay claims and settlements.

Thus, apart from seeking a return to secondary action and picketing, we find tax deductions for union benefits and extending the adult minimum wage to 18-21 year-olds and apprentices sitting alongside demands for free primary school meals, five days paid educational leave for all workers and the effective renationalisation of the railways.

The PM says he is not going to allow them to put the clock back. I hope this is true. If it is not – and who now believes a word he says? – all the good work Margaret Thatcher, Jim Prior and Norman Tebbit did in removing the union millstone hanging round the nation's neck will be undone and we shall again become a basket-case.

Whether the 130 demands presage another winter of discontent is another matter. It is certainly true that days lost through strikes are rising, largely because the public sector unions are bent on disrupting the indifferent services they provide in return for their relative security and costly pensions.

But we have a long way to go before we reach disruption of 1970s' proportions. For one thing, Arthur Scargill has killed the strike-prone mining industry with his singular mixture of Kremlinesque contempt for democratic norms and obtuse generalship. There also aren't a lot of union members outside a smaller public sector. And since union bosses can't pull people out on strike at will, regardless of their connection with the dispute, the damage they can cause is necessarily limited.

They also suffer from a belated public recognition that they are far better at killing jobs than protecting them through their wilful refusal to see a connection between their militancy and bankruptcy.

I have often wondered whether they care two hoots about people thrown on the scrap heap, as they put it. If they did, they would never have allowed lawyers to wax obscenely fat, for example, on mineworkers' compensation claims.

But all that does not mean that we are safe from their worst excesses. Their latest power play is a sharp reminder that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from recent history. They are just the
same old power-mad
institutions intent on bending governments to their will while pretending they act for the common man they manipulate like puppets.

So, let's face reality: all that stands between us and a return to the 1970s is a battered Gordon Brown on his political uppers. If he gives way on secondary action this autumn, we can expect new demands for restoration of the closed shop. And then where shall we be? Answer: back where we started.

That means we would return to anarchy. The official figures for the 1970s show that over that decade there were 25,924 strikes and 128,040,000 working days lost – an average of 500 strikes and 250,000 days lost a week.

Let the unions' 130 demands be a warning to us all.