The New York Times on the BA strike:

‘The labor disruptions are occurring at a critical time for Britain and its fragile recovery. The country is already reeling from high unemployment, weak consumer spending and a shrinking financial services industry, and some economists fear that any disruption could easily send the economy into another downturn.

“You have to recognize there is some risk of a double dip, but that’s not the central forecast,” Andrew Sentence, a Bank of England policy maker, said in an interview with CNBC this week.’

The Australian on embarrassing political friends:

‘For the British Prime Minister and the opposition leader the damaging pre-election distractions were proof of the dangers inherent in political parties relying on cashed-up donors to bankroll their operations.

After promising to become a “permanent resident” of Britain so he could take up a seat in the House of Lords, Lord Ashcroft secretly remained legally based in Belize, a Caribbean tax haven. Lord Ashcroft quietly donated $1 million to Australia’s Liberal Party at a crucial stage of John Howard’s 2004 re-election campaign and has poured more than 10 times that amount into British politics, even directly financing and managing the party’s marginal seat campaign and becoming the party’s deputy chairman.

The only relief for the Conservatives was that they deflected attention from Lord Ashcroft by pointing to Labour’s financial dependence on the Unite union, which has provided almost a quarter of all Labour donations in recent years and enjoys a powerful say in the selection of MPs.

Mr Cameron used Unite’s three-day BA cabin crew strike planned for today to raise the prospect of a return to 1970s-style industrial chaos, as the largest rail union was also considering holding Britain’s first national rail strike in 16 years.

The truth is neither Lord Ashcroft nor Unite wields the policy influence that their critics claim.

Insiders say Lord Ashcroft has had little role in policy debates.

And while the Tories are presenting Unite as a left-wing bogey, the union is too unwieldy and internally divided to speak with a clear voice in Labour policy forums or to impose a consistent ideological stamp on the MPs it backs for selection.’

Johannesburg Star on taxing the banks.

‘Both Britain’s major parties are looking at how to recover money from financial institutions that benefited from huge bailouts during the financial crisis. Britain was forced to use taxpayer money to buy large stakes in both RBS and Lloyds.

Labour said it was committed to an international deal and the party’s election coordinator Douglas Alexander accused Cameron of making up his policy “on the back of a fag packet”.

Khaleej Times:

‘Prime Minister Gordon Brown irritated Unite, a major political donor, by calling the union “deplorable” and saying as late as Friday night that it should call off the strike. Britain faces even more possible travel chaos in the run-up to the April

Opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron criticized the stranglehold that unions such as Unite have over the Labour Party.

“Once again, under Gordon Brown the vested interests triumph and the people lose out,” Cameron said Saturday. “This threatens the future of one of Britain’s greatest companies along with thousands of jobs.”’