STRIKING council workers in the flagship Tory borough of Barnet warned yesterday that rightwingers would use privatisation plans there as a blueprint to destroy public services nationwide.

Refuse collectors, librarians and nursery nurses formed picket lines in protest at the council’s plans to slash budgets and farm out even more services to private contractors.

Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn visited the Mill Hill refuse depot, where he was surrounded by a sea of pickets wearing Tory axe-wielder-in-chief George Osborne masks.

Public-sector union Unison said that two-thirds of bin lorries were at a standstill at the depot.

The borough, which includes Finchley, represented in Parliament by Margaret Thatcher until 1992, has been branded easyCouncil (after no-frills airline easyJet) for privatising and stripping back its statutory functions.

A worker at a children’s centre trimmed to term-time-only opening said she had been forced to reapply for her job despite working for the borough for six years.

“Parents don’t want to leave their children at the nursery because of the uncertainty, some have pulled their kids out,” she said.

Pickets at East Finchley Library, threatened with closure or a huge reduction in size, received honks of support from passing cars and fire engines.

Barnet Unison libraries convener Hugh Jordan told the Star that farming out services was “bad for democracy, bad for services and bad for people.”

“It will be a blueprint [for the rest of the country], and a disaster,” he said.

“If the plans go through, the libraries will be run for private profit. The quality of service will deterioriate as jobs, expertise and experience are lost.”