Total wipeout
LABOUR’S boast that they are fixing the foundations of the economy is as empty as the nation’s coffers.
In fact, they are dangerously close to losing control.
This Government has already borrowed more than £100billion this year.
Much of that has been to finance pay deals for their mates in the public sector unions.
A catastrophic failure to curb state spending — especially welfare — means another £20.2billion was added to the borrowing mountain in September.
That’s almost the equivalent of the Home Office’s annual budget just to keep the Government afloat for a MONTH.
The figures are so bad that they have already all but wiped out Rachel Reeves’s wafer-thin fiscal “headroom” for November’s Budget.
The Chancellor no doubt plans to tackle this by hitting workers with even more growth-damaging tax rises.
But the UK is already a country where more than half of all households now take MORE in benefits and services than they contribute in taxes.
Unless this is tackled, Britain is on a one-way road to economic oblivion.
Royal Dodge
THERE’S an unwanted squatter on the royal estate at Windsor.
Freeloading Prince Andrew has already been persuaded to give up use of his royal titles publicly.
Is it too much to hope that he will volunteer to move out of Royal Lodge, too?
Only the brother of a monarch would be allowed to live in a 30-room mansion while paying a peppercorn rent to the Crown Estate.
It’s been a privilege not an entitlement.
And it’s one that Andrew has regularly abused by repeatedly dragging the Royal Family name through the mud.
Questions about his finances, funding and living arrangements will only go away when the prince himself decides to disappear, too.
The only mercy is that his mother, the late Queen, is not here to witness this sorry, debasing spectacle.
Boats sunk
THE Government at last looks like it will succeed in stopping the boats.
Unfortunately, they are the vessels used by Border Force patrols who have voted to strike over pay.
The industrial action is being led by the left-wing PCS union, which has fought attempts by any number of Home Secretaries to tackle illegal migration.
But if patrol crews do walk out it will leave a big job unfilled.
After all, who will be there to provide illegal migrants with a kindly escort to dry land?
