I can't believe Zahawi actually thinks ppl would see this as anything but cynical and crass.
The Conservative party chairman, Nadhim Zahawi has been accused of insulting NHS workers with a “ludicrous” suggestion that it is the wrong time to strike over low pay because it would help Vladimir Putin divide the west.
Zahawi told broadcasters that nurses should call off their strikes and abandon their pay demands because it risked playing into the hands of the Russian president, who he said wanted to fuel inflation in the west.
Pat Cullen, the RCN’s general secretary, said it was a “new low” for the government to “use Russia’s war in Ukraine as a justification for a real-terms pay cut for nurses in the UK”.
She said: “The public does not believe this kind of rhetoric and wants ministers to address our dispute. Nursing staff cannot afford their food and other bills and still fear the worst on energy this winter …"
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...workers-playing-into-putins-hands-says-zahawi
@brb this is what I'm talking about.
On my way into work I was listening to the radio (LBC) and caller after caller was on slating Zahawi for those remarks and backing the strikes. All he's done is strengthen the support within the general public. And this is largely the perception towards how the tories come across when it comes to public opinion for these strikes.
What I noticed from the callers, and Zahawi appears too ignorant to realise, is that there are plenty of tory voters whose sons, daughters, and other close relatives are nurses or working in the NHS, and they were all saying they wouldn't be voting tory again because they were furious at him for belittling the dire situation of nurses and using their call for better pay and conditions as somehow fueling Putin's ambitions. If the tories genuinely think the public are dumb enough to buy this bollox, they really are fcked tbh and all they'll end up doing is handing voters over to the other parties.
