EDUCATION Secretary Michael Gove wins no prizes for diplomacy, even though there is more than a smidgeon of truth in his claim that some union leaders are “itching for a fight”.

But there is also more than a smidgeon of truth that some rightwing Tories are “rubbing their hands with glee” at the prospect of taking on the unions in the defining way that Margaret Thatcher did in the 1980s.

Mr Gove, though, has undiplomatically insulted the ordinary, moderate people who will be striking tomorrow – the ones he needs to win round.

They are people who have been frightened by the Government’s desire to cut one-in-four public sector jobs without having any fully-formed plans to create replacement jobs in the private sector.

For them, the erosion of their pensions is the final straw which turns a moderate into a militant – even though, at the bottom of their hearts, they must know that some reform is equitable.

The strikers are providing the Government with a superb smokescreen to conceal the political significance of today’s Autumn Statement. The eurozone crisis is not of Mr Osborne’s making, but it is dragging the economy he is in charge of frighteningly close to a double dip.

His plans to rescue us now admit that spending is important in getting an economy moving. Slashing by itself cannot succeed.

But where can he find the money to spend? If there is £5bn underspend in Government, then his cost-savings have been poorly implemented. How can there be so much loose change when frontline services are being hit?

We have to hope that his £20bn memorandum of understanding with the pension companies is more effective than the understandings he came to with the banks. The banks haven’t fulfilled their promises to lend. Will the pension companies really build?

To get through this, we do need to all be in it together. The undiplomatic language is entrenching a divide which will leave us all in deeper water than we are now