But there’s little backing for ticket office closures

Rail strikes tend to get a lot of coverage in the London-based media because it is only really the big cities that rely very much on rail for commuting. The capital is something of an outlier when it comes to the importance of rail. Also this comes after the pandemic when a very large proportion of office workers operated from home without the need to commute.

Johnson’s Tory government has latched onto the strike action to attack Labour and Starmer. Quite whether that will resonate is hard to say. It does get the public’s attention away from the Number 10 lockdown breaches.

I’m not sure that the Tories are helped by the approach of TransportSec Grant Shapps who just come over as far too aggressive in a situation where travellers are looking for problem-solvers rather than political rhetoric.

Update. New poll on the strike from ComRes

Mike Smithson