Khan’s money tree

The good news for Londoners and the million or so commuters travelling daily into the capital is that the Tube strike planned for this week was called off late on Sunday. The mayor, Sadiq Khan, managed to conjure up an extra £30 million to offer the RMT in order to avert the strikes.

The bad news is that the union Aslef, which represents the majority of drivers, now says it wants a 12 per cent pay increase for its members. What did Mr Khan expect? As one Aslef boss put it, the mayor “had found the magic money tree and our members expect to share the fruit”.

Mick Lynch, the RMT general secretary, who has held train companies to ransom for years, could hardly believe his luck, though he made clear the offer may not be enough but was the basis for further negotiations. Mr Khan has been pleading poverty for the capital’s transport network since the pandemic decimated passenger traffic and profits. Journeys are back to around 90 per cent of pre-covid levels, but Transport for London (TFL) remains deep in the red.

As his predecessor as mayor Boris Johnson said, this is a foretaste of a Labour government prepared to punish the taxpayer and push up borrowing to appease their union paymasters.

It is not as if the Tube drivers are poorly paid. They have a base salary of around £60,000 but they are also one of the few groups in either the public or private sector with a final salary pension. These can pay out a guaranteed income worth up to £42,000 a year and have been discontinued in almost all areas of the economy because they are cripplingly expensive for employers to maintain.

Why is Mr Khan not linking any pay increase to the phasing out of these generous pensions?