Stop and grow
ACCORDING to No10, the only item on today’s Cabinet agenda will be growth.
Sir Keir Starmer wants his team to come up with a wave of fresh ideas to boost productivity and turbocharge the economy.
Let’s hope ministers don’t expect to travel to the meeting by Tube.
London’s Underground is paralysed by a week-long strike which is expected to cost the economy £230million, with 700,000 working days lost.
If the PM wants to get the country moving, he can start by getting a grip of the knuckle-headed rail unions.
Next, he needs to ditch the worst of Angela Rayner’s employment rights bill — which only further strengthens the hand of the unions, and heaps an even greater burden on struggling firms.
And he should face down Labour rebels and cut the bloated £300billion welfare bill — freeing funds to reduce crippling levels of tax in the process.
It is unsustainable — and economically ruinous — to have 4.2million people on sickness benefits.
Until he tackles the root causes of stagnation in Britain, Sir Keir won’t stand a chance of improving the lives of voters — or his own dire poll rating.
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Welcome Home
SHABANA Mahmood got a predictably shambolic welcome to the Home Office: the arrival of 1,097 dinghy migrants on her first full day.
Yesterday she at least showed some determination to get a grip.
We welcome her plan to suspend visas for countries that refuse to agree returns deals for illegal migrants — the policy should have been introduced years ago.
She should follow it up with a tough message for obstructive Left-wing officials who have made her department a graveyard for past Home Secretaries.
But she also needs a Rwanda-style plan to stop migrants boarding small boats in the first place.
Without a proper deterrent, she’s working with one hand tied behind her back.
Ed scratcher
ECO zealot Ed Miliband hangs around in government like a bad smell from a dodgy boiler.
The Energy Secretary resisted the PM’s attempt to shunt him into another department and take his ruinous Net Zero targets with him.
Now we learn that hard-hit taxpayers are not only being stung for his crazed obsession with heat pumps, they are also footing the bill for him to have a GAS boiler to heat his constituency home.
As with his disgraced former colleague, ex-Deputy PM Rayner, it’s a case of “Do as I say, not as I do”.
