Editorial: No-one is making the case against the wave of strikes in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK

​There are two key points to make about the latest strike that is set to take place in Northern Ireland today.

The first is that the industrial action by government vets will cause disruption to the Irish Sea border, which reached its most significant level at the beginning of this month with the first phase of introduction of the Windsor Framework. The Veterinary Service Animal Health Group (VSAHG) will begin five days of action today, affecting checks by vets on animals and some products entering Northern Ireland from the mainland.

These controls are in part a requirement of the framework, agreed between the UK and EU to alleviate the worst aspects of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Later this week, in the early days of November, was set to be the first time that the new trade barrier between NI and Great Britain could be assessed in its first month of operation, with green and red lanes.

In any event, however, the fact that the border is being introduced in different stages at different times means that it will take a very long time to assess its ultimate impact on the movement of goods – an impact that is, in any event, separate to the constitutional impact.

A second thing to observe about the strike is that this is the latest in a wave of industrial action in NI in both the public and the private sectors, just as there has been a wave of strikes in the rest of the UK.

The Conservative government has failed badly to make the case against such action, out of fear of seeming mean. But NI politicians are even worse. Barely anyone is mentioning the fact that the UK is so over extended financially that it already faces a debt crisis. NI gets more money per capita than the other three home nations.

So it is wrong to depict these actions as being solely rooted in meanness. In fact many aspects of public sector working life are gold-plated, such as the pensions that staff get which are unavailable in the private sectors.