ANDY SHOWS AMBITION
SOARING unemployment is the refusal of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to inoculate communities against miserable joblessness.
Enthusiastic government propaganda about a vaccine bounce-back ignores lengthening dole queues officially forecast to stretch to 2.6 million in a return to the misery of the years of Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
Others predict a total already up to 1.72 million will climb even higher, particularly if the job-saving furlough scheme is not extended beyond the end of April when some lockdown restrictions will remain in place.
Updated unemployment figures will be released by the Office for Budget Responsibility with next month’s Budget yet the Prime Minister and Chancellor brushing over lost livelihoods in their recovery propaganda is telling.
Joblessness is a price
Tory Governments traditionally accept is worth paying by other people, twisting the knife by goading those in work to resent the workless relying on benefits to survive.
Gordon Brown, a Labour ex-PM with a deep work ethic, and concerned leaders from Wales’ Mark Drakeford
IMAGINE the media backlash if Labour was accused of splurging nearly £2bn on “crony” contracts to Tory donors and friends. Banana republics don’t all grow yellow fruit. to Mayors from City Halls in the Alliance for Full Employment bang the drum as does TUC chief Frances O’Grady.
Johnson and Sunak’s response is criminally inadequate – schemes announced barely scratch the surface of what is required.
The record 400,000 redundancies in a three-month period were a sign of terrible pain ahead. Saving jobs will be a test of Red Wall Tories. The Chancellor returning to cuts to balance the books would dump hundreds of thousands on the scrapheap.
Levelling up by increasing unemployment everywhere would deepen economic failure by a government with the worst record in the G7.
The undoubted success of Britain’s vaccination drive is on the corpses of Europe’s highest death toll.
Sacrificing workers is not economic recovery. It would be a catastrophe.
REFRESHING honesty from King of the he’s hit a bumpy stretch and needs North, Andy Burnham, who admits he’d Labour’s Liam Byrne to topple Tory Andy still “one day” like to wear the Labour Street as West Midlands Mayor in crown and be Prime Minister – the May 6 elections to show the instead of trotting out that old party is back on a road to power. political garbage about being Displaying greater passion and happy in a current job. establishing thick red policy lines
Winners are ambitious and a between himself and Johnson Greater Manchester Mayor would reinforce Starmer’s championing earlier vaccination successful prosecutions at PMQs. of workers shows a far more HONEST Mayor The Labour leader could do rounded politician than during his of Manchester without Burnham’s publiclyexpressed failed 2010 and 2015 leadership bids. Keir aspiration right now but it might Starmer is under no immediate threat but inject energy into his performances.
Johnson and Sunak’s response is criminally inadequate
SORRY to butt in on the Lancashire farmer harvesting £50,000 by hiring out goats for Zoom calls, yet it shows how baaaaaaad nurses’ pay is when Covid heroes earn on average £33,000 a year. Dot McCarthy’s no scapegoat but let’s tell Matt Hancock to stop being a silly billy next time the Health Secretary bleats he gave big rises to underpaid NHS staff.