Here's Gordon's message to prison officers and other fed-up public sector workers:
"We have succeeded in tackling inflation and having a stable economy because of discipline in pay over these last ten years. That discipline will have to continue. The staging of the pay awards are an essential part of controlling inflation in the economy, keeping interest rates and mortgage rates low for home owners and making sure that we have stability so that we can continue as an economy, the tenth and now the eleventh year of growth and the eleventh year of creating more jobs. And we will do nothing to put that at risk. It is an absolutely essential element of maintaining the discipline in the economy so that people have jobs, people have higher standards of living and at the same time we have a stable economy that yields low interest rates."
He said this during a visit to an NHS clinic in Vauxhall in the company of Alan Johnson. During the same visit Johnson was asked if pay anger in the public sector threatened an autumn and winter of discontent. Johnson effectively said he'd heard that one before. And haven't we all? But with the TUC conference approaching, an embarrassing ex-minister blunketting on about Europe, more indifferent stats on school standard and gun crime just not going away, I'm wondering if we're heading if not for a winter of discontent than maybe for an autumn of disquiet. Maybe that snap election is becoming just a little more unlikely.
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