Fire strike stakes climb higher

Green Goddesses are back on the road

By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

The £200m "black hole" ministers are refusing to plug in the firefighters' overnight deal is, in the grand scheme of government spending, a small amount of money - but the political stakes could not be higher.

The total cost of the deal to town halls would be an extra 21p a week. That's roughly £11 a year on the average council tax bill.

But for the government, to okay the deal would concede a principle far more costly.

Tony Blair's government has not handled the dispute well

That principle is that local authorities cannot expect central government to just shell out for whatever deal they cook up with their employees - only 50,000 of whom are firefighters, with teachers, social workers and refuse collectors among the rest.

Ministers fear that if the government agreed to underwrite the firefighters' deal, what chance these other key workers would not follow their example in going all out for an inflation-busting pay claim?

It could mean an awful lot more than a mere 21p on the council tax.

	:	On the picket
Images of the walk-out in East London

What of other public sector workers, meanwhile?

The government's hard line on the fire strike has been adopted at least in part pour discourager les autres - in the NHS, for example - from following suit.

Giving in to strike action is the kind of behaviour Tony Blair has previously held up as a grave error of Labour leaderships past.

And then there are the strings ministers want attached to any deal with any public sector employees.

John Prescott is involved in negotiations

For its second term in office, New Labour has framed its whole approach to the public services in terms of more money firmly tied to sweeping "modernisation" reforms.

The consistent Conservative line of attack on government spending plans has been that while it is all very well for ministers to pile higher levels of funding into schools and hospitals, it is wasted unless accompanied by serious reforms.

The 16% deal with strings apparently detached overnight by firefighters and their employers - a pincer movement ministers had suspected they might have to face - would give a boost to the Tory criticisms.

Badly handled

The government's handling of the dispute, however, has been far from surefooted. It has instead been characterised by hesitation, ambiguity and plain contradiction.

We have seen Downing Street sources raising the spectre of "Scargillism", swiftly followed by John Prescott being conciliatory.

There has been vacillation and confusion over a whole host of issues from whether troops can use red fire engines to who should cross FBU picket lines to get those engines.

Ministers have even insisted the dispute is solely an issue between the firefighters and their employers, at the same time as being directly involved in it - New Labour's equivalent of the "beer and sandwiches" approach it normally decries

Here, also, lies another potential danger for Mr Blair.

In the run-up to the 1997 election it was made fairly clear that his approach to trade union demands and disputes would veer closer to that of Margaret (now Baroness) Thatcher than any other Labour leader would dare.

But unlike her administrations, his is openly and deeply embroiled in the firefighters' strike.

Mr Blair's government, having early on thrown itself into the thick of the dispute, runs the risk of blowing out of the water the notion that New Labour is completely different from the old version.