So, Ange, do you still want to hand more power to the unions?

Labour is in a bind – and there’s only one way out. If they fail to get a grip on Birmingham’s bin strikes, the risk of contagion is high. Yet they were elected on a platform to boost workers’ rights and strengthen union power, a promise many – not least Angela Rayner – will have intended to keep.

After all, just 17 per cent of 18-24-year olds voted for Right-wing parties in last year’s election. Capitalism – the economic system has been lifting around 140,000 people globally out of poverty every day – has become uncool and low status. Up with nationalisation and rule by trade union; down with private enterprise. Two thirds of young people want to live in a socialist society, a 2021 survey found.

Capitalism, to this way of thinking, is responsible for the country’s ills, either real or perceived: climate change; the housing crisis; “inequality”. Our industries, including energy, rail and water, should be (re)nationalised; private sector involvement is a threat to “our” NHS.

On reading these surveys older generations typically respond with such knowing put-downs as “it’s just a phase”. Millennials and Zoomers want to turn us into the Socialist Republic of Britain because they’re idealistic and have never experienced the harsh realities of an avowedly Left-wing government.

Sure, living standards have sunk to such an extent that you’d now be better off living in the poorest parts of Lithuania than the poorest parts of Britain. Yes, real wages have fallen by 6 per cent since 2008. But many people haven’t experienced 1970s levels of dysfunction, or are too eager to forget the lessons of that decade.

Well, that could be about to change. Once again we are under the rule of a Labour Government that rewards the unions, penalises the middle classes and clobbers the private sector. For a preview of what is to come, we need look no further than Birmingham – where three million wheelie bins of rotting, rat-infested rubbish have been left in the streets. Images from our second city are reminiscent of the chaotic squalor under another Labour administration, half a century ago.

Birmingham City Council is effectively bankrupt following an equal pay claim it fought, and lost, resulting in a £1.1 billion bill. In an effort to save money and increase productivity, it proposed eliminating the “waste recycling and collection officer” role, but Unite had other ideas. Bin workers walked out indefinitely in March, and the union’s leader Sharon Graham is now warning, with barely-concealed glee, that the strikes could “absolutely” spread beyond Birmingham.

Most Brits have forgotten the bad old days, but union activists aren’t among them. They have an unbroken record of facing employers and government year after year, a long memory for victories and defeat, and a clear objective.

Graham – notorious for her “leverage” campaigns, which many would consider tantamount to harassment – sounds as though she’s stepped out of Dr Who’s Tardis from the Wilson years. Tony Blair may have kept unions at arms’ length, sensibly resisting pressure to repeal the Thatcher-Major reforms but with Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner in government, leaders have spotted an opportunity. Labour may have thought that their early £10 billion bung to public sector staff would be the end of it: it’s likely to just be the beginning.

Red Ange received a £10,000 donation from Unite towards her general election campaign last year. As her website proudly gushes, she was previously the most senior elected official at Unison in the north-west of England.

Perhaps she will extinguish this fire – bringing in the Army may have been a savvy move – but her Employment Rights Bill will expand precisely the sort of worker entitlements that put Birmingham City Council in the hole to begin with. Women shouldn’t be paid the same as men for doing different jobs – jobs which are cleaner, more pleasant, less dangerous. Wage differentials aren’t a product of exploitation, they hand workers choice.

Britain is not declining because employees are exploited and our unions are weak. It’s expiring because the state intervenes too much, in areas far beyond its core remit. And yet the demands for it to do more are endless.

Young people may have a romanticised, rose-tinted view of Leftist economics, but the country it made in the 1970s was one where if you moved house and wanted a telephone installed you could end up waiting six months. Where you were not allowed to take more than a paltry sum abroad, and where our state airline put foreign holidays out of most people’s reach. How will Gen Z feel when blackouts return – as they very nearly did in January – and they can’t charge their smartphones? Socialist economics might not be popular for much longer.