As teachers prepare to join the latest wave of industrial action battering Rishi Sunak’s government this week, there is little sign of either side backing down.
Teachers in England and Wales will strike on Wednesday, alongside university staff, train drivers and 100,000 civil servants across scores of separate workplaces.
Nurses and ambulance workers will follow next week in an unprecedented joint stoppage, raising the stakes in their long-running dispute yet higher.
“People are adding it to a long list of ‘things wrong with the country’,” says James Johnson, of the pollsters JL Partners.