Boris just as callous as the 80s Iron Lady

LETTING unemployment boom betrays Boris Johnson’s inner Margaret Thatcher.

They share political DNA: worshipping the wealthy, hating regulations, disliking public services, shackling trade unions and bashing European neighbours are innate to them both.

The pandemic may have forced free-marketeer Johnson to become a temporary socialist with the job-saving furlough scheme.

Labour and union leaders voiced support for an intervention as bold as Gordon Brown’s bank nationalisation because it was a Leftwing answer to a capitalist calamity.

Yet winding it up in a few months, letting dole queues reach lengths not seen since Margaret Thatcher dumped three million on the skip in her 1980s carnage, would be his finest tribute yet to the callous lady.

The PM stating the UK can’t afford an emergency scheme costing more than £100billion during the crisis is looking at the problem the wrong way.

Labour Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds has made a reasonable start in the post but she requires an iron fist in her velvet glove. Britain mustn’t allow unemployment to soar in the 2020s, discarding thousands of communities and hundreds of thousands of grafters, including the young whose livelihoods will be decimated.

Thatcher threw away coal miners, shipyard and steel workers. Johnson’s ditching people in shops and the music industry, gyms and theatres.

Red wall Tories – nervous blue MPs in constituencies borrowed from Labour in England’s North and Midlands – quietly fret that the charlatan is now signing their electoral death warrants.

Rishi Sunak, currently basking in poll ratings superior to his boss, could quickly go from hero to zero as well.

The jobs-sized hole in his financial package on Wednesday, highlighted in advance by TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady, will repeat Thatcher’s mistakes. Johnson declaring there’ll be no return to David Cameron and Theresa May’s austerity is sophistry unless employment, particularly in sectors he’s shuttering or barricading, is protected for as long as possible.

The paucity of Johnson’s ambition is clear, as the Great Betrayer edges away from policies that have sustained incomes and jobs since March.

A radical leader would seek the tools to build a fairer economy, such as a universal basic income to abolish poverty, and a four-day working week.

Johnson washing his hands as he jet-fuels unemployment is Thatcher minus the handbag. His clowning around, speaking Greek and ruffling a blond mop fools nobody any more.