GORDON BROWN finally got around to ringing the leaders of the Unite union on Sunday to ask them to reconsider their planned strike action at British Airways.

Yesterday, he finally decided to share with the rest of us that he thought the strike action was 'deplorable.' Hardly controversial really, but why take so long to speak out? This is the man who, after all, always seems to find the time to congratulate sports team or celebrities where a good PR opportunity is spotted.

If the Conservatives have any sense – recent opinion polls suggest the jury is still out on that point – they'll highlight the differences between the handling of the postal strike and this strike.

Go back to the postal strike before Christmas and you could be forgiven for thinking that Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, had been reading straight from a Thatcher book on industrial relations.

In the dispute between BA and Unite, the Government has been almost silent. The most vocal critic has so far been Lord Adonis, who could only muster up that the effects of the dispute were “totally unjustified”.

Why the difference in stances towards two disputes which are very similar? Both involve companies which began as public institutions, and at the heart of both strikes is a dispute over modernisation. Both firms, on the face of it, are struggling to be relevant in the 21st century and both need to change.

Could it be that while the Communication Workers Union is a large union, it isn't tipping up anything like as much in donations to Labour as the Unite union, a union which happens to share the same political adviser as Gordon Brown in the form of Charlie Whelan?

The fact that Brown has been so silent – as he tends to be when faced with a difficult decision – plays right into the hands of the Tories. In the same way as Labour are trying to remind voters of the nasty Tories of old, the Conservatives should hit right back by pointing out how powerful the unions are within Labour again.

If Labour can't stop Unite's assistant general secretary Len McCluskey from turning the dispute into a vote on the future of unions, then they certainly don't deserve another crack of the whip running the country.

McCluskey – who comes across as a really bad holiday camp comedian – can bang on all he wants about what he thinks the dispute is 'really' about, but the cold hard facts show that BA could go bust for good if they don't make savings.

Who wins then? Principles don't pay the bills except, it seems, when you're the Labour Party.