Nadine Dorries, the ex MP and our very own Angel of Lovely Lane, once described former Prime Minister David Cameron and his sidekick George Osborne, the former Chancellor, as two posh boys.

In fact, her attack on her then colleagues was quite savage, saying: “I think that not only are Cameron and Osborne two posh boys who don't know the price of milk, but they are two arrogant posh boys who show no remorse, no contrition, and no passion to want to understand the lives of others – and that is their real crime.”

Was she right? I suspect she was. Of course, Cameron and Osborne’s greatest ‘gift’ to the country was year after year after year of grinding austerity. And it was the public sector that suffered most.

The effects of the public spending cuts they imposed from 2010 – with the help of the Lib Dems at first and then later entirely of their own doing – are still being felt to this very day.

The cuts to services and public sector wages are behind hospital and ambulance delays; the criminal justice system is still criminally underfunded; local authorities are starved of essential cash and resources and despite the fact the railways are run by private companies, it’s still the government pulling the strings.

Now of course we are all having to deal with the effects of public sector strikes ranging from teachers to hospital consultants and now binmen in Warrington.

In effect, Cameron and Osborne’s policies were ticking time bombs for future governments.

And then came Covid. All those public services that were cut to the bone were suddenly ‘essential front-line services’. We clapped for them. We put messages of support in our windows. We were grateful and we thanked them.

But the government wasn’t grateful enough to actually pay public sector workers what they are worth.

And then came rampant inflation. All those public sector workers who had watched their pay fall in real terms year after year since the Tories came to power saw it diminishing even faster as a succession of unelected prime ministers failed to get a grip of rising prices.

So is it any wonder that those workers who bore the brunt of ideological austerity decided that enough is enough and have started to take industrial action.

Yes, not having your bins collected is an unpleasant nuisance and yes, it’s easy to blame the unions but in my opinion, the real villain in this story is 13 years of Tory ‘posh boys with no passion to want to understand the lives of others’ telling us what’s good for us.

On another topic. I think it’s always best to admit when you have got something wrong and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Last week, Warrington South MP Andy Carter more or less admitted he was doing a ‘chicken run’ at the next general election to find himself a safer seat. He also conceded the parliamentary boundary changes, which have seen Lymm moved into the Tatton constituency, had made a Labour victory more likely in his current constituency.

Warrington Guardian:

So I confidently predicted Mr Carter would reappear as the Tory candidate for the new Chester South and Eddisbury constituency.

And this is where I admit I was wrong. It now transpires he is, in fact, on the nine-person shortlist for the new Waveney Valley constituency which includes communities in north Suffolk and parts of south Norfolk.

I wish Mr Carter the best of luck but he may have his work cut out for him. Back in June he was the subject of an article by pro-Conservative journalist Andrew Pierce in the Mail Online which suggested Mr Carter owed his Warrington South seat to Boris Johnson’s ‘staunchly pro-Brexit platform at the last general election’ and would struggle to find a new seat.

Pierce wrote: “The problem? He is also one of the four Tory MPs on Harriet Harman’s Privileges Committee, which voted to ban Boris from Parliament for 90 days — the second-longest suspension in 75 years — and the ex-PM’s supporters are enraged by Carter’s actions.

‘Boris is hugely popular with the party in the country,’ says one ally. ‘Backstabbers like Andy need to think of a new career after the next election because they won’t be MPs any more.’ With friends like that, who needs enemies?