Richard Madeley facing striking worker's union reps is cringe viewing

Richard Madeley is having successive blunders with union representatives and they are making people cringe.

It started yesterday when he clashed with Matt Wrack, the general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union when discussing their role in the ongoing strikes.

Madeley questioned why fire workers should be able to strike when the police can't.

Wrack calmly explained that firefighters are "civilian workers" so have the same rights as people from other industries who strike, unlike the police who have "specifical legal" frameworks preventing them from unionising.

Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Then today he had a run in with National Education Union joint general secretary Kevin Courtney in which he questioned him about their policy of not informing headteachers ahead of strike action meaning parents are not always aware if their children's schools will be impacted by a dispute.

Courtney said teachers had "a right" to do so but conceded parents should be informed and apologised to them for disruption.

He blamed the government for creating "uncertainty" by putting pressure on headteachers to use nursery nurses as stand in teachers meaning it is hard to determine whether a school will be closed or not.

"The government has rundown our education, underfunded our schools and its underpaid the people who work in them", he said.

It comes as the government warned of "significant disruption" today thanks to a coordinated series of strikes involving teachers, civil servants, Border Force staff and train drivers.

Meanwhile, the last few days are not the first times Madeley has made a bit of a [redacted] out of himself when interviewing union leaders.

Take his multiple clashes with Mick Lynch, for instance where the RMT boss has left him licking his wounds again and again.

Cringe stuff.

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.