IT was like 2002 all over again. Most people thought that the firefighters' strike had been put away with the Christmas decorations, but there they were, out again yesterday, burning with indignation on the picket line.

And there was their union, occupying the tabloid headlines again. During the last strike, Fire Brigades' Union leader Andy Gilchrist was exposed as some kind of Marxist with a picture of Che Guevera in his office; now we know that he cheats on his wife. If the strikes and the vilification continue, by the end of the month he'll have been exposed as an asylum seeker.

The vilification went further yesterday when the Tory defence spokesman told the strikers via national radio: ''You are a bunch of idiots frankly and you are a disgrace to your country.''

Bernard Jenkin, the spokesman in question, seems to be trying to make his name out of the strike. It was he who said last year: "You almost wonder whether the firefighters' union is being paid by Saddam Hussein."

Firefighters are certainly not idiots. They are brave. They do a vital job.

Equally, they are not public relations experts. The strike has been characterised by cack-handed PR, as shown by the initial claims for a 40 per cent pay rise.

Then yesterday came the announcement that 30,000 British soldiers were heading for war - and at the same time the British firefighters headed for the picket line. It doesn't look good. It will look really bad if there are more strikes in February when the airstrikes are beginning.

So the union's decision to return to Acas is to be welcomed. It must go there with realism uppermost in its mind - the 11 per cent over two years on the table at the moment is, realistically, a huge pay rise for most working people.

That realism must also accept that the Government, which is investing massively in public services, cannot allow taxpayers' money to disappear solely on pay rises - however much people feel they deserve those rises.

The economic slowdown, Gordon Brown's over-optimistic predictions and the slow pace of change are beginning to undermine the wisdom of such massive investment: the firefighters must, realistically, know that the Government cannot cave into them and that their service cannot go un-modernised.

The strike is, though, a two-cornered dispute. While the union has often been cack-handed, the Government has often appeared Prescottian: bull-headed and incoherent.

Now is the time for it to be skilful. The union has to be presented with a way out through which it can save face.

Then the dispute can be consigned to history, where it belongs, and the country can get on with the most pressing issue: to attack Iraq or not.