Concern? It’s an act
Tories will trick the hungry into feeding fatcats
ACROSS Whitehall, the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine flutters in defiant solidarity above our great offices of state.
In the floors below, civil servants scurry around in search of answers to the burning question from their ministerial bosses: What do we do now?
Vladimir Putin has invaded the corridors of power.
In every department, policies and spending are under review as the world gets to grips with the repercussions of the tyrant’s war on Ukraine.
The conflict is shattering the old (last month’s) world order.
And no more so than in the magisterial Treasury office of Rishi Sunak.
Paddling
As he prepares for a critical cost-ofliving-crisis mini Budget in 10 days, the billionaire Chancellor might take solace from the beautiful view over St James’s Park – one of the world’s finest.
But like the swans gliding gracefully across its lakes, the Chancellor’s expensively slippered feet will be paddling away furiously beneath the surface.
Little was going right even before Ukraine. Now Sunak is a War Chancellor, with the horsemen of the economic apocalypse bearing down on every front – including taxes and an estimated £43billion war premium on an inflationary balloon that was already the highest in 30 years.
The famous sweat shirt must be living up to its name as he takes an occasional wary glance at the wall chart plotting his path to the PM’S place in No 10.
He might ponder the wallhanging he picked himself, of blue-overalled engiworking the levers of a submarine. The ship of state, diving deep but not yet sunk? Or us bumping along on the bottom with no escape hatch?
Sunak is juggling conflicting demands against a living standards crash which scares even his own MPS.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng says the public is “willing to endure hardships” to help Ukraine. What they are not prepared to endure is greater hardship falsely blamed on the war.
As Russia unleashes yet more monstrous atrocities on Ukraine, fractures grow in the Cabinet over what to do about those on the economic front line here. As food campaigner Jack Monroe bluntly warns: Children will die from the cost-of-living crisis.
Ministerial reputations crumble as fast as food, petrol and heating prices rise. Home Secretary Priti Patel continues to defy political gravity, making Britain a global disgrace for the stark contrast between its treatment of refugees and the free pass for mansionhungry oligarch friends of Vlad.
Paul Johnson, of economic policy experts the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says Sunak must make a “huge judgneers ment call”. It shouldn’t be so huge. His biggest is between helping households, or ducking a windfall tax on the record profits of oil companies with “more cash than we know what to do with”.
Boris Johnson gave us a clue at Commons question time: “The result of that would be to see the oil companies put up their prices even higher…”
So those who must choose between eating and heating will pay to shield the profits, vast salaries and bonuses of the firms driving the coming storm.
It’s clear which side the PM is on in this domestic fight for survival.