Glimpse of a Soviet future under Corbyn
were being advertised. The collapse of the company will put 22,000 jobs at risk, including 9,000 in the UK, and lead to the possible closure of its 563 high-street travel agents.
In an email to staff on Saturday night, Mr Fankhauser promised that he would not let the company ‘fall over without a fight’.
He said the company had come under ‘relentless pressure’ and begged staff to continue serving its customers as normal despite the possibility of collapse. He wrote: ‘I know how powerless all of us feel in the current situation. After months of relentless pressure, none of us can be in any doubt that we have reached an absolutely critical moment for the future of this business.’
Questions will be raised about why executives at the company have been paid multi-million bonuses while leading the firm to near financial ruin.
Mr Fankhauser did not comment as he left the talks in London last night.
EVEN Boris Johnson’s most passionate evangelists would struggle to argue that the past month has been anything other than a disaster for the Prime Minister.
Let us count the ways. He suffered a string of crushing Commons defeats, sacked 21 Tory renegades, destroyed his ultra-slender majority and became embroiled in a Supreme Court hearing into whether he deceived the Queen.
By normal laws of political gravity, the Conservatives should be dead and buried. Instead, improbably, they lead in one poll by 15 points. To understand why, simply cast your eyes to Brighton, where Labour is holding its annual conference.
Amid the greatest constitutional crisis since the Second World War, the party chose to embark on a vicious civil war, naval-gazing and a fresh outpouring of bilious class hate.
First, Comrade Corbyn’s Marxist bootboys botched a purge to oust deputy leader Tom Watson (a thoroughly unsympathetic individual who peddled myths about a fabricated Westminster paedophile ring, trashing the reputations of innocent men).
Then, in a hammer blow, one of the leader’s closest allies quit. Warning Labour could not win an election, Andrew Fisher said he was sick of the ‘blizzard of lies’ and ‘lack of human decency’.
On Brexit, Mr Corbyn absurdly has no opinion. In open defiance, a raft of frontbenchers demanded the party support Remain. ‘Trust the people’, they cried. What hypocrisy! They won’t even let the people have their say in a general election.
Unsurprisingly, anti-Semitism reared its ugly head. In a disgusting display, a Jewish delegate was heckled mercilessly.
And proving the communists are firmly in control, Labour – dripping with the politics of envy – will scrap private schools, an insane act that deprives families of the advantages many of Mr Corbyn’s circle enjoyed.
Meanwhile, a poll of members highlights the extent to which the party has lurched from its roots. They want to ditch the Queen, are ashamed of Britain and blame the UK, not the IRA, for terror attacks in Ulster.
If voters required a chilling glimpse of the Soviet-style future Britain would face under Mr Corbyn, yesterday they got it in spades.