What the commentators said

Chancellor Rishi Sunak claimed in a speech last month that markets were “a moral force for good”, said James Beattie in The Mirror. Tell that to staff at P&O. However loudly Tory MPs complain about P&O’s wrongdoings, their party must share the blame for the dismissals. In recent years, it has deliberately weakened labour laws and “given the green light to the worst aspects of capitalism”. Last year, for example, ministers blocked a bill that would have outlawed just the kind of “fire and rehire” methods used by P&O. Boris Johnson pledged to make Britain “the best place in the world to work”, said James Moore in The Independent. Yet there’s still no sign of the employment bill that was promised to protect workers in a post-Brexit world, and ministers have refused to curtail the use of zero-hours contracts. Instead, deregulation now seems to be the order of the day. Welcome to “Singapore-on-Thames”.

The story illustrates “the perils of globalisation”, said Patrick O’Flynn in the Daily Express. When owners do not live in “the communities inhabited by their staff”, it becomes easier to see staff “as just another inert factor of production and treat them accordingly”; workers’ rights are notoriously scarce in Dubai. But unfortunately, the Government’s options are limited. The legal situation is complex (P&O’s ships are flagged in foreign ports) and ministers can’t very well ban the company from our ports, when it carries 15% of the UK ’s freight traffic. I see some grounds for optimism, said Tom Clark in Prospect. If we were all to shun P&O Ferries for our holidays – the unions have called for a boycott – it might change attitudes in the boardroom. What’s more, the loud condemnation of P&O from both Left and Right (even from Nigel Farage) could be a sign that the “long reign of neoliberalism” is at last nearing its end. Let’s hope so. “The tide has been running against working people for too long.”