How can a train company cancel trains because unions didn’t go on strike? - David Behrens

You read that right: there was no strike. But the “last minute” cancellation of planned industrial action had wrought chaos just the same.

So, to sum up – they can’t run a service when there’s a strike and they can’t run one when there isn’t.

After a working lifetime at the thick end of farces like this, I barely raised an eyebrow when I heard. At least I wasn’t squashed into a carriage this time. But Behrens Junior was, for the line in question is his regular commute. He is just setting out on his career and already he is staring into the abyss of strikes and cancellations until retirement finally pushes him into a siding. For all the talk of HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail there is no realistic hope of an acceptable service in his lifetime, just as there wasn’t in mine.

Many will argue the government is to blame; that the service should never have been privatised. That may be so but it’s not the point, for the network today is made up of both private firms and failed companies that have been taken into public hands – Northern Rail among them. It’s an outfit that could not have got any worse after being taken over but it hasn’t got better, and that’s because it’s still run from day to day by the same ineffective managers who trot out excuses by rote to cover their slippery tracks. The same is true of every other rail company and many more of our public services – and it won’t change until someone comes along and knocks them into shape.

But woe betide the person who tries.

Dominic Raab evidently had a go at improving standards in the Foreign Office when he was in charge of it, but now stands accused of bullying because, according to his permanent secretary Lord McDonald, he “couldn’t be made to see” the effect he was having on staff.

Or maybe he could. Perhaps that was the point.

Obviously I wasn’t in the Foreign Office with Raab so I don’t know how cack-handedly he wielded his broom as he attempted his clean sweep – but I do know there’s a fine line between being bullied and getting an old-fashioned rollicking. And while no-one should have to endure the former, none of us is above the latter.

Yet in my three years in a government department I don’t recall anyone being hauled over the coals for anything, though goodness knows there was reason enough. Managers didn’t dare to administer a telling-off lest they be accused of being heavy-handed. As a result, mediocrity became institutionalised. Staff felt entitled to complain or seek a long, stress-related leave of absence if they were asked to do anything they didn’t like the sound of.

The Foreign Office – by which I mean its officials, not just the Minister – certainly has reason to improve. This year alone it admitted mishandling Britain’s chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, and its outdated computers were blamed for undermining the response to the Ukraine crisis. One think-tank said the department was “at the lowest level of operational competence and respect” for half a century.

This was before Raab’s time and it was his job to knock heads together. Maybe he took that too literally – or more likely his officials were simply not used to being told to up their game. Either way, when he was reinstated as Justice Secretary last month staff were offered a “route out” of his department – a chance to scurry away like frightened mice.

If we are to have public services worth the money we pay for them, we are going to have to staff them with people who are up to the challenge. This goes for the Foreign Office and the Justice Department as much as the train companies. And someone is going to have to do the dirty work. It’s no use whingeing about slippery tracks and the stressful effect on staff.

This sort of reorganisation goes on all the time in the private sector; no-one likes doing it, less still being a victim of it, but it’s part of life – and the fact that public services remain relatively immune makes it hard to take seriously the moans of the PCS union that the “stress” of their jobs has brought its 100,000 civil servant members to the end of their tether.

In the coming weeks the PCS is planning industrial action which it boasts will wreak chaos in every corner of public life. But as with Northern Rail, isn’t that what happens when they’re not on strike?