Why the writing is already on the wall for Keir Starmer's Government after major miscalculations: David Behrens

It is nine days since the Transport Secretary Louise Haigh announced what she claimed was a “breakthrough” that would end two years of industrial action on the railways. The agreement with the drivers’ union Aslef – members’ average earnings around £60,000 a year – would “protect passengers from further national strikes and improve the reliability of services”, she said.

It took just 24 hours for the same union to announce it was going on strike all over again. It was a slap in the face not just to Ms Haigh but to everyone whose lives they have derailed these last two years.

Worse was to come. The rival RMT union immediately demanded parity with Aslef, despite having settled its own dispute only six months ago. A third union, the TSSA, lodged a claim for 38 days’ holiday a year and a 35-hour week.

Neither Aslef nor the RMT has been required to improve productivity or abandon any of their archaic restrictive practices in return for their settlements. So there will be no modernisation, no efficiencies and no more effort to show for the higher fares the settlements will bring. The only beneficiaries will be the firms running replacement bus services.

The inter-union rivalry laid bare by the RMT is not confined to the railways. If you live in Sheffield it’s unlikely your dustbin will be emptied for the foreseeable future because two unions are at war with each other over which is recognised. Unison, peeved that the bin contractor chose to negotiate instead with the GMB, walked out and boasted that rubbish will now pile up and therefore fester across the city – as if compromising the public’s health at the hottest time of year was something to gloat about.

Unison is one of Labour’s biggest donors in the region, so there’s more chance of ministers emptying the bins themselves than wading in and knocking heads together.

In fact, far from curbing the power of unions to behave as they please, the government is scrapping the higher thresholds for strike action introduced by the Conservatives. So five years of ‘me, too’ claims and counterclaims lie ahead for us all.

All this has proved an open goal for the Conservatives. The shadow home secretary and leadership contender James Cleverly was clearly making a pitch to rank-and-file party members when he said the government had been “played by its union paymasters”.

A lot now hinges on those Tories choosing the right replacement for Rishi Sunak. The victor will not be a caretaker leader in the mould of William Hague in 1997 but a likely prime minister five years from now.

That’s a long time in politics but already the writing is on the wall. Not since the chaos overseen by Callaghan has a pro-union manifesto won an election, and if you don’t remember how bad it all was, just ask a freezing pensioner.

It was the promise of change that swept Labour into power last month; a lifeline that might pull the country out of the quagmire into which it has sunk. But instead of a lifeboat we’ve been sent a ship of fools – negotiators who give ground and claw nothing back. It’s not how dealmaking is supposed to work.

So if they can’t reform the railways and they won’t get the bins emptied, how will they tackle the most urgent transformation of all? Last weekend, the NHS ombudsman Rebecca Hilsenrath railed against the culture and management of a health service that had been revered like a religion instead of being made to embrace change. We had all been complicit, she added; the noise of those pans we banged on our doorsteps had drowned out what should have been constructive criticism. The health secretary Wes Streeting has promised repeatedly that structural reform is coming and it is no exaggeration to say the party’s longevity in office depends on whether he delivers. If not, Labour’s legacy will be a divided society – with 52 per cent disenfranchised and the other half out on strike.