With the honourable exception of George Orwell, I don’t imagine there are many Old Etonians who have much time for what the popular press used to call ‘union firebrands’.

There certainly won’t be any lining up to sing songs of solidarity around the brazier with Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union, whose members have done by design what the rail companies do by incompetence – stopped the choo-choos and brought the country virtually to a standstill. Or that part of the country which relies on a functioning rail service at least.

It is a sizeable constituency, mind. There were 990 million rail passenger journeys made between April 1 2021 and March 31 2022, according to government figures. That comes to about 2,700,000 a day unless my calculator is working to rule. So it’s fair to say very few commuters were making like Lulu (or Kylie if you prefer) and doing the locomotion last week.

Mr Lynch certainly won’t have any fans in the current Tory Cabinet, a group which includes two Old Etonians – Kwasi Kwarteng and Jacob Rees-Mogg – as well as the Prime Minister himself. But there is one former owner of the Eton College top hat and tails stage magician combo who is prepared to doff his silver spoon to the straight-talking union leader: Hugh Laurie, the Golden Globe-winning star of US drama House.

“I don’t know enough about the rail dispute,” he tweeted on Tuesday (what, with all that money spent on your education?). “I only observe that RMT’s Mick Lynch cleaned up every single media picador who tried their luck today.”

Interesting choice of words, no? If you’re not up on your blood sports, a picador is a prancing, caped, horse-mounted fellow who jabs at bulls with a lance – or, if you’re hapless, prancing Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy Chris Philp, with a rictus grin and a rabbit-in-the-headlights stare that says: ‘Get me the hell off this TV set now’. But more on his bruising Newsnight encounter with Mr Lynch later in the programme.

In truth there is something a little bit bullish about the RMT boss, who has been heid bummer since taking over from Mick Cash in 2021 (there’s a take-the-Mick gag in there somewhere but my joke generator has joined my calculator on the picket line).

Perhaps it’s his solid appearance and shaved head. Perhaps, as Hugh Laurie notes, it’s the way he methodically eviscerates those who come up against him in debates on television and radio. That said, he’s the most chilled and avuncular looking bull I’ve ever seen.

Still, he has certainly grabbed the attention in a way unseen since – whisper it – a certain Arthur Scargill brought his union firebrand schtick and rust-coloured combover to the nation’s television sets during the Miners’ Strike of the 1980s. To stress the point, that champion of workers’ rights the Daily Mail tracked Mr Scargill down last week. And where did they find him? You’ll never guess: on an RMT picket line in Wakefield. “Like an old war horse that’s heard a bugle, Arthur Scargill returns to the picket line … aged 84” ran the headline. Go Art, I say.

Cards on the table now: I have a degree of sympathy for the striking rail workers, mostly because I am a reasonable sort of chap and because I haven’t heard anything from Mr Lynch which sounds at all unreasonable or outrageous. Quite the opposite in fact.

If the UK government is serious about its levelling up agenda – though frankly that’s looking less and less likely with every passing fiasco and by-election disaster – and eager as well to bring prosperity and even a modicum of economic re-balancing to the areas of England it still has a shaky toe-hold in, then the fact of people having more money in their pay packet seems like a good thing.

And if the RMT’s 83,000 members end up being just a little bit more comfortably off – if they win a pay rise which at least attempts to close the gap on the soaring rate of inflation – then good things happen, right? Like they can eat out to help out (remember that?). Like they can buy stuff. Like they can go on holiday, even if their suitcases end up left behind in the Heathrow suitcase mountain (can’t blame the EU for that one can you?). And if, as a result of all that, they find the cost of living crisis snapping at their heels just a little less urgently, then some of them in Red Wall seats might even vote Tory for a second time.

Hey, stranger things have happened. Kate Bush is number one again.

Now back to Chris Philp, because enough time has passed for you to have forgotten who he is, something I sense the electorate may also do very soon.

The Honourable Member for Croydon South drew the short straw on Monday and was put up against Mr Lynch on Newsnight. The referee was Kirsty Wark who may well have stressed the no-kicking-no-spitting-no-biting-no-scratching rule so familiar to players of the Eton Wall Game, but clearly forgot to ban the use of the word ‘liar’ as a weapon for disarming an opponent in a live TV interview. So every time Mr Philp said anything that resembled a sentence (it didn’t happen as often as you would think) ‘liar’ was what he got from the man sitting calm and collected across from him.

Mr Philp looked as his feet like Boris does when he’s pretending to be contrite, but there was a desk in the way so he looked at that instead. And then he looked embarrassed. Then he looked panicked. Then he looked sorry for himself. And so it went. Great stuff and not a drop of actual blood spilled.

Mr Lynch’s exchange with Kay Burley on Sky was priceless too.

“What will picketing involve?” she asked him from her pitch in Waterloo Station. “You can see what picketing involves,” he said, looking a little nonplussed and turning round to where a group of striking RMT members were doing what picketing involves, i.e. standing around in high-vis bibs looking hot and wondering if the toilets were open. “I can’t believe this line of questioning.” He then explained, as if to a child, what picketing is – to wit: “standing outside the workplace to try to encourage people who want to go to work not to go to work” – then asked: “What else do you think it involves?”.

Ah, the canny viewer then said to themselves. I know what she thinks it involves – flying pickets, violence, concrete slabs dropped from overpasses, the Battle of Orgreave, Marxists threatening revolution, coppers splitting heads open with truncheons because, well, the rule of law must be maintained and if that means a gash or three on the working class bonce, then so be it.

Either that or she had Chris Philp patched into her earpiece and he genuinely did want to know because he only learned about it second hand from Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Billy Bragg boxset.

“I’m sorry you feel the need to ridicule me,” Burley added, not looking sorry at all.

Mr Lynch – Ghandi done up like a fortysomething soccer casual – just smiled his calm, union firebrand smile.