THE trades unions should not be even thinking about disrupting the Olympic Games.

If Britain finds itself portrayed as an incompetent sick man because industrial action reduces the Games to chaos, our reputation will be so badly harmed that it will hamper our economic recovery for years.

We will be an international laughing stock. There are real reasons to question the Olympics: an ever-increasing amount of money is being lavished upon the Games at a terrible time and this region certainly feels its distance from London.

However, having invested so much taxpayers’ money in the Games, the nation should be pulling together to maximise the returns. The unions should be applauding the Games as the opposite to the Government’s austerity plans. It is a throwback to true Keynesian economics: a splurge of state investment which is stimulating the economy, creating jobs and, we hope, leaving a legacy of increased employment.

Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, believes the Olympics provides his union with “an opportunity”.

He is wrong.

His calls for industrial action or civil disobedience will surely backfire upon the union. Unite is putting its ordinary, reasonable members in an impossible position and nearly all union members are ordinary, reasonable people. Labour, too, will be dismayed by Mr McCluskey’s belligerence. Common sense says Unite will not go through with this threat. If it does, the country will be in an unforgiving mood.