GB: Driverless trains on the London Underground are in the news again. With union strikes threatening to make traveling within the Smoke a nightmare this week, it was only a matter of time before the question of axing drivers in favour of automation would pop up again. As always, it’s bound to get messy.

The Tories have championed full-on automation of the tube for decades. Boris Johnson made the case for driverless trains when he campaigned for his second term as London mayor back in 2012. The now-prime minister pledged the tube would be fully automated by 2022. It has since proven another broken promise on his ever-expanding list of unrealised vanity projects. Despite failing to deliver, Johnson has continued to argue that driverless trains would free the sector from being the “prisoners of the unions”.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps echoed that sentiment when he made driverless trains a conditions for bailing out TfL earlier this year during another week of industrial action. The minister told the transport operator it would have to make looking into the feasibility of driverless trains a priority if it wanted the £200m bailout, Shapps told them. Shapps had made driverless trains a previous condition in a £1bn bailout in 2021. …