Miliband cannot play piggy in the middle on strikes

It's our children who suffered the loss of a day's precious education, the critics say.

It's the hardworking (all the parties love that word) parents who had to make alternative arrangements.

The unions say they're doing this for everyone. The Tories say they're hurting everyone.

The taxpaying public are playing piggy in the middle while our kids' education and future is in an emotional custody battle between opposing ideologies.

The unions make the valid point that it wasn't lollipop ladies, bin men or social workers that caused the recession.

Neither was it the children or the mums and dads who have been inconvenienced by a shut school or left with a full bin on the basis of a strike justified with turnouts as low as 20 per cent in some unions.

Firefighters had a much bigger turnout for their ballot.

But their own reasons for striking - particularly the concern over 60-year-old firefighters being expected to carry people out of burning buildings due to pension reforms - were swept up in a general wave of public sector discontent because everyone chose the same day to walk out.

Everyone walking out at once might have grabbed the headlines, but it also let the Government to condemn them en masse rather than address the many and varied concerns each union has.

Meanwhile Tory, Lib Dem and Labour MPs who either imposed miserable austerity on the country or presided over years of unsustainable spending (debate those points among yourselves) were probably not too bothered by schools shutting.

They earn more than double the national average salary. I can't imagine any of them was particularly stretched by the extra childcare costs.

At least the Tories took a side, whether rightly or wrongly, in condemning the strike.

Labour chose to neither support nor condemn it officially even though its bread is buttered by the unions and their donations.

It's a strange position to take because Labour owes its very existence to the trade union movement.

I don't see why Ed Miliband needs to appear so coy about it.

Many of his own MPs, councillors or candidates are proud to back the unions. Stephanie Peacock, standing in Halesowen and Rowley Regis, was more than happy to tweet messages of solidarity and declares publicly on her website that she works for the GMB. Her belief in a fair deal for working people won't change if she becomes an MP.

John Edwards, chairman of the West Midlands Fire Authority whose firefighters went out on strike, took the local government minister Brandon Lewis to task after he flagged up Labour's union funding.

He wanted to know how much the Tories get from industry and corporations.

Whatever the figures might be, the Conservatives can argue that it's the businesses that create the wealth and the jobs that get the country back on track. Labour always used to be proud to be the party of the workers.

Ed Miliband could do with working out exactly where he stands with public sector strikes so the unions know what they're letting themselves in for if he becomes Prime Minister. He owes them that much at least.

As any 'hardworking' person affected by the walkouts will attest, playing piggy in the middle is no fun at all.