Tories’ great deception as UK impoverished

“BRITAIN must live within its means” is the great deception perpetrated against the British people by the Tories to justify the austerity that really meant cutting public services in order to cut taxes for their wealthiest backers when this has resulted in cutting the very productivity which would have enabled us to grow our way out of debt.

Once again a Tory leader is making a false comparison with Greece when the UK is not in the eurozone, and the only thing we really have in common with Greece is our first-past-the-post electoral system, which clearly needs reform.

Once rising poverty made clear that austerity was inevitably failing our economy, the Tory government fell back on its second great deception of blaming immigration for the failing public services it had starved of cash by devolving austerity to local councils.

This cruel deception was the main reason why Cameron’s folly of a referendum failed in its purpose of uniting a divided Tory Party and instead divided the nation to the extent of a rise in hate crime, including the murder of Remain MP Jo Cox at the hands of a British Nazi.

The disastrous legacy of this referendum, which did not even require a majority of the electorate, is a perpetual leadership battle between Tory Brexiteers vying to outdo each other in their unrealistic claims for the Wonderland that is supposed to result from leaving the EU when it’s already quite clear that Brexit is impoverishing the “just about managing” they promised to help. Margaret Phelps Penarth