Suppose Harry and Meghan weren't taking their revenge on the Royal Family with their six-part Netflix series and tell-all book, all promoted relentlessly with high profile tell-all interviews.
All attention would be on the series of strikes plaguing the country. Postmen, midwives, railwaymen, nurses, ambulance men etc, are all on strike demanding eye-watering payrises of between 19% and 26%, while inflation is at 10%.
The trouble is, the government is broke.
The have only three options of getting the money to fund payrises: a) borrow b) raise taxes and c) cut spending in another area.
Thanks to covid, the UK's debt is 100% of GDP, and markets won't lend more, as their tantrum over Truss proved. The last time UK debt was over 100% of GDP was 1945, and markets wouldn't lend then either. Attlee was forced to freeze wages for five years and extend rationing, in order to run budget surpluses and pay down the debt (the original austerity govt).
Sunak and Hunt already raised taxes in the Nov budget to fund the pay offer of 4% (e.g. corporation tax was raised from 19% to 26%).
They also don't think they can cut spending in other areas to fund nurses payrises.
So they're at an impasse. Sunak's strategy is simply to wait the strikers out till their strike funds are exhausted.
That's very hard to do when you've got a press addicted to forcing the govt to u-turn regardless of the cost.
Enter Harry & Meghan. They're sucking up so much bandwidth, they've pushed the strikes off the front pages.
Sunak must be hoping the H&M saga continues till spring, by which time the unions will be broke and easier to bring to heel.