I’d wish you a merry Christmas, but as a good man of the Left I will be refraining from any seasonal greetings in solidarity with Father Christmas and the elves, who are withdrawing their labour until the government agrees to increase the milk and cookies budget in line with inflation. 

Although I can’t go on strike myself, as the Critic magazine employs me as an indentured labourer under a dubious 18th century statute, I will however be doing my bit for the unions by refusing to write anything sensible, true or entertaining until Epiphany. 

Father Christmas has a suspicious love of red

Solidarity for Saint Nicholas’s struggle isn’t limited to post-liberal journalists however, with sympathy strikes from the rail workers, postal workers and the NHS. This will send a strong message to grandmothers everywhere this Christmas as they wait for relatives whose trains are cancelled and post that won’t be arriving, before eventually slipping on the ice the council can’t afford to clear, breaking their hips and calling for an ambulance currently too hotly engaged in class struggle to waste time on hapless pensioners. Oh, yes, granny will have plenty of time to think about the plight of the public sector workers this non-festive winter season. 

Some may express non-comradely sentiments and ask scab-type questions, of course. You may hear people wondering if public sector workers, having been paid consistently better than their private sector equivalents for twenty years, have a right to unlimited pay rises at a time when everyone is suffering. Or asking if, just maybe, it’s not in the public interest for emergency service workers to be allowed to step out whenever they choose, during the busiest time of year for the health system. 

Others have noted that Father Christmas has a suspicious love of red, a worryingly large beard, a propensity to redistribute wealth and a disturbing habit of writing lists of enemies to punish. I have, however, been assured by friends involved in Arctic Momentum that any comparisons to Karl Marx or Lenin are purely coincidental, and that Christmas will be restored just as soon as the capitalist swine submit to the glorious dictatorship of the elven workers. 

Yes, we’re all dreaming of a red Christmas, but I was hoping for a few more ruddy cheeked slavic women carrying sheaves of grain and a little less freezing to death whilst being mocked as a bourgeois pigdog by the child of an Indonesian billionaire studying at SOAS. 

Like any good peasant who wants to see the cruel landlords overthrown but doesn’t trust all the workers currently marching in the streets, I’m putting my faith in the Tsar. Could King Charles ride out, dissolve the Duma (sorry, Parliament), get Britain working again and save Christmas? I’m always hoping for the return of the King, but I’m never surprised to be disappointed. 

As so often we’re presented with rotten choices, whilst the basic consolations of family, festivity and fun at Christmas are due to be disrupted and denied for yet another year following the misery of Covid. 

The one thing we don’t have is a Wicked Witch

Britain is rapidly resembling Narnia, the land of always winter and never Christmas. We’ve got snow, anthropomorphic animals too terrified to fight back (well, OK, the cabinet, but it’s a distinction without a difference) and the nagging sense that we’re living in a rather contrived biblical allegory that’s supposed to teach us all a lesson. Our hopes have been vested in a gang of children who have variously betrayed us all for the sake of Turkish delight (young Boris Johnson playing a belter as Edmund), left the land of enchantment in order to shop for shoes (poor old Theresa May, as hard done by as Susan), been horribly bullied despite being right all along (Liz Truss/Lucy, all is forgiven), and we’re left with a rather po-faced boy-leader-by-default (Rishi Sunak as sensible proto-adult Peter). 

The one thing we don’t have in all of this is a Wicked Witch, because unfortunately we’re all to blame. The strikers may be ruining our Christmasses, but the government has run public services into the ground whilst at the same time showing little backbone in the face of a year of disruptive strikes. Even poor old granny isn’t blameless (not your grandmother, dear reader, who is a saint), as she’s been relentlessly blocking new housing for the grandchildren and lobbying the Tory government to protect her pension as everyone else tightens their belts.

What is to be done? Neither party has the answers, because both have missed out on the Christmas spirit and come to embody the ethics of Black Friday instead — consumerism, individualism and self interest. The Right denigrates the ideal of public service, but the Left simply advocates for the narrow concerns of public sector workers, rather than protecting public services themselves, or those who rely on them. 

We need Father Christmas to break the picket line and bring us back what we’ve lost: the economy of the gift and the ideal of service. Public service ought to be a vocation, not a sinecure or a jobs creation scheme. Public services can only be as good as those who deliver them, and they’re too important to be constantly disrupted by strikes. 

That means changes which few in mainstream politics are yet ready to accept, but the chaos of the winter walk-outs shows they are urgently needed. The status of public service work needs to change. For the most vital workers in areas like policing, education and healthcare, strikes must be banned, and it must become far easier to fire people for incompetence. But if the stick has got bigger, so must the carrot — wages must go up dramatically and track inflation, and talent must be attracted with good pay and conditions. 

Rather than demoralised and underfunded services diluted by outsourcing and disrupted by industrial action, we need a new vision in which able, public-spirited people are paid well to get results, and removed if they can’t deliver them. Matters like an efficient transport network, good quality education and a functioning healthcare system are too important to sacrifice to the whims of special interests. With Britain teetering on the brink of economic and social disaster, we cannot afford to be bound by the outdated ideologies of the 20th century. 

Let’s just hope we can get our act together in time to save Christmas, and the country too.