During the Tory leadership contest this summer, it was frequently said that whoever won would face the most politically difficult winter in a generation. In the end, despite winning the contest, Liz Truss didn’t make it that far. But winter is about to sting her successor.

After the collapse of the Truss premiership, Rishi Sunak needed to steady the ship in his first weeks in No. 10. This has gone reasonably well. The Autumn Statement was given a passing grade by the markets and there is no parliamentary rebellion against it. Westminster is no longer watching nervously to see how the City responds to every cough and splutter from Downing Street.

Westminster itself is less frenetic, too. Though the government has had to negotiate with Tory backbenchers over house-building targets, the rebellion has not felt like a threat to the government’s survival. The amendment by the former levelling up secretary Simon Clarke on onshore wind – backed by both Truss and Boris Johnson – has shown the willingness of those who have just left office to speak their minds, even when it is inconvenient to their successors. Yet this rebellion has failed to morph into a more general expression of discontent and a compromise has been reached.

But winter is blowing in. The first serious blast of cold weather has arrived, and Europe now faces the prospect of a period with little wind and sun, reducing the amount of renewable energy available. The cold will be the biggest test of the continent’s energy infrastructure since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The UK is currently sending energy across the Channel on interconnectors at the fastest rate since 2016. But the big question is whether, if the situation reverses as demand increases with the cold weather here and the UK needs to import energy, there will be sufficient supplies available.

The cold weather will also have consequences for the NHS. The health service is already struggling: ambulances now take over an hour to respond to a Category 2 call (that response is meant to take 18 minutes, on average). In October, 43,792 patients waited more than 12 hours in A&E from the decision to admit to admission itself – 204 times as long as in the same month four years ago. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, has warned of a ‘prolonged period’ of high death rates because people either didn’t or couldn’t seek medical treatment during the Covid pandemic. The health service faces further challenges with a flu season that looks set to be worse than usual. This is the first year since 2019 that people are socialising as normal and it could lead to a surge in infections.

Compounding these problems are a series of strikes. Nurses will strike first on 15 December and then again on 20 December. The Royal College of Nursing stresses that this won’t lead to a loss of emergency care. But it will cause disruption, otherwise what would be the point of industrial action? This will make an already dire situation with regard to NHS waiting lists even worse (the numbers currently stand at 7.1 million). There will also be an ambulance strike on 21 December, which won’t help the situation.

The nurses want a 19 per cent pay rise. But given the government’s position that inflation-linked pay increases are unaffordable – it would cost an additional £18 billion to offer all public-sector workers this level of pay rise – this is not going to be granted. It means industrial action could go on for some time, as it remains unclear how a compromise could be reached.

It is not just nurses who are going on strike of course. There will be industrial action in one sector or another every day in the run-up to Christmas. Rail staff are already taking action and the RMT has just turned down an 8 per cent pay rise, with plans for further strikes over Christmas. The political question is who will the travelling public blame for the strike? Will they think that the RMT is being unreasonable and should have agreed to the government’s request for a Christmas truce? Or will these strikes add to the general sense that things simply aren’t working properly in Britain and need to be dealt with, whatever the cost?

Labour is clearly aware that it matters who is seen by a weary public as the aggressor. The party is trying to suggest that it is the Tories who want confrontation, labelling them a ‘militant government’ and claiming that they want to make striking nurses a ‘scapegoat’ for the NHS’s failings this winter. The government, on the other hand, is striving to sound reasonable and show that it is looking for solutions, not confrontation.

The strikes come at a difficult time for the government. Too much of the public sector has yet to recover from Covid. As Michael Gove pointed out during the Tory leadership contest, there are some ‘core functions’ of government ‘which are simply at the moment not functioning’. This is creating a dangerous sense that things just aren’t working in Britain – and the Tories, having been in power for 12 years, will feel the backlash unless these problems are sorted.

The government must avoid a situation whereby public-sector pay settlements lead to either reduced services or higher taxes. At the same time, it must show that the country is still able to function, despite the widespread industrial action taking place. A sense of grip is a precondition for any sort of government revival in the polls.

Of all of the risks the government faces this winter, the worst is of an NHS crisis spiralling out of control. Steve Barclay, who did the winter contingency planning over the summer, is now back at the Department of Health. The Tories must avoid a ‘Black Wednesday moment’ with the NHS. It would take the party as long to recover from that as it did from the events of 16 September 1992.

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