The Metropolis has ground to a halt today, as Transport for London shirkers begin a five day walkout.

Members of the Rail, Maritime And Transport union (RMT) are striking over pay and conditions.

The union has raised concerns over "fatigue management," citing the health impact of early and late shifts on its members, and are demanding a 32-hour working week.

Tens of thousands of commuters and families have been disrupted by this walkout, and will continue to be affected in the coming days.

Jacob Rees-Mogg blamed Sadiq Khan for the strike

Number 10 has said that people are 'rightly fed up' with the strikes and have called for more talks to end the walkout, but it won’t tell the Mayor to use his powers to stop it.

In 2023, a law introduced by Liz Truss’s Government, called the ‘Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act’ was passed, which allows the government to set minimum service levels during strikes in key public services such as health, transport, and education, permitting employers to issue a "work notice" mandating minimum staffing levels during strikes, with unions potentially liable if they do not ensure compliance.

Although Labour has an intention to repeal this Act, is it currently the law of the land and could be used to stop the strikes. By failing to use the powers available to him, Sadiq Khan is conniving in bringing London to a standstill.

The Mayor of London has allowed himself to be at the beck and call of Labour’s trade union paymasters - unwilling to defy them in favour of standing up for the people who elected him.

Normal services will not resume until around 8am on Friday | GETTY

This strike did not need to happen. Not least, as tube drivers are supernumerary.

Most of these trains operate automatically with a cab observer, though the observer serves little useful purpose. Bogus safety standards set by Unions keep them in post - but this has been shown to be ineffective.

On Boxing Day 2023, we learned the tragic story of a 72 year old pensioner called Brian Mitchell, who stumbled onto the tracks at Stratford station and was fatally struck by a terminating train five minutes later.

After Mr Mitchell’s death, three more trains drove over the track where he was lying, before being noticed by a fourth train.

So, why are they there? It is sheer Union obduracy.

It is time to make the move towards driverless trains on the TfL network - not least as they are not drivers but observers, who don’t in fact observe. The Docklands Light Railway, which has no drivers will remain operative for all but two of the five day strike period.

The capital cannot be held to ransom by greedy and lazy union bosses any longer - particularly when such action is prevented by the adoption of technological advancement enjoyed by many major cities across the world.

The Mayor of London failed to prevent this mass walkout on two levels - he failed to leverage powers at his disposal to prevent disruptive action on this scale, and by the repeated failures to adopt technologies that would spare working people from being at the mercy of those demanding better standards than the rest of us.

This is Sadiq Khan’s strike, and the people should hold him accountable for it.