Don’t risk a wobble becoming a collapse
AFTER the horror, grief and soul-searching over how we came to harbour vicious enemies of our way of life, the contest to determine Britain’s future begins again. And what an extraordinary election this is turning out to be.
on any rational analysis of the contenders’ policies and personal qualities, the result seemed a foregone conclusion. or so the experts told us.
Almost unanimously, they declared Jeremy Corbyn and his rag-bag team of hard-Left zealots unelectable, with an extremist manifesto guaranteed to ruin the country.
By contrast, they saw that theresa May was highly experienced, diligent, levelheaded and widely trusted.
Victory was assured, said the pundits – all the more so, after her success in purging the tory party of the gimmickry and cronyism of the Cameron years and her focus on helping struggling working families in every region. the only question, they thought, was how big her majority would be.
But then came Mrs May’s wobble over social care funding in England and Wales. And now an astonishing poll shows Labour closing the gap from 24 points at the start of the campaign to just five.
Yet yesterday the independent institute for Fiscal Studies laid bare the true cost of Labour’s fantasy economics, saying the party’s plans would ‘raise tax to record levels in peacetime’, while leaving a massive black hole in the public finances.
in a blistering assessment, iFS deputy director Carl Emmerson said: ‘For Labour we can have pretty much everything – free higher education, free childcare, more spending on pay, health, infrastructure. And the pretence is that can all be funded by faceless corporations and “the rich”.’
For ‘pretence’, read ‘naked lie’. For as Mr Emmerson points out, a huge part of the burden of Labour’s reckless spending plans would inevitably fall on ordinary working families, while pulverizing businesses, depressing wages and causing widespread job losses.
true, the impartial iFS also raises serious doubts about tory spending plans, predicting the deficit will still be significant in 2022 and saying lower immigration will hit tax revenues. But the main blast of its attack is directed squarely at Labour’s lunacy. nor does Mr Corbyn’s opportunist posturing stop at the economy. With highly questionable taste, he sought yesterday to capitalise on the Manchester atrocity, exploiting it to present himself as the true champion of national security!
this is the man, remember, who has voted 56 times against anti-terror legislation, shared platforms with islamist fanatics, joined demonstrations to support irA bombers – and called at a Communist congress for Britain to leave nato.
Meanwhile, the politician he’s put in charge of the anti-terror brief is that blustering incompetent Diane Abbott – who herself has voted 30 times against increasing the authorities’ powers to fight terrorism.
true, we shouldn’t read too much into a single opinion poll. But with others agreeing that Mrs May’s lead is narrowing and the one-note Snp desperate to inflict any damage they can on the resurgent tories here in Scotland, the acute danger to our livelihoods and security is vividly clear.