The UK Trade Union Bill, currently working its way through parliament, is almost a caricature of repressive anti-worker legislation. Coming at a time when the Conservative Party is emboldened by its first majority government since 1992, and when its main opposition is in a period of great uncertainty, the bill reads like an exercise in wish fulfillment from people with a longstanding contempt for unions and a desire to finish the job Margaret Thatcher started.

The bill — a key legislative priority of the new government — has overwhelming support from the right-wing press in the UK, as well as pro-business lobbying groups (though it has been sharply criticized by personnel management advocacy groups, on the grounds that it is unnecessary and destructive to workplace relations).

The language and objectives of the bill are framed as a response to a series of large, one-day strikes in the public sector against ongoing austerity measures, as well as recent industrial actions on the London Underground. The government has seized on relatively low turnouts in some of the strike authorization votes as proof that supposedly hard-line union leaders are causing disruption without a mandate from their members.