Workers’ frights
IT’S just two days until the Budget and is anyone sure what will be in it?
Does Chancellor Rachel Reeves even know? Weeks of Treasury leaks, the Chancellor’s own address to the nation, flip-flops and U-turns have left firms and households confused and terrified.
Even if it is not as bad as feared, all that speculation will have damaged economic confidence.
But it will be bad.
In spite of Labour’s manifesto promise not to hike taxes for “working people” and in spite of the Chancellor saying after her first brutal Budget she would not come back for more, she is likely to hit “working people”.
Again.
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And it needn’t be so.
While business leaders at the CBI will today warn that the only way out of decline is through growth — not taxes — the only noticeable growth under Labour so far has been in Government spending and out-of-control welfare.
Two thirds of Britons would rather the Chancellor cut spending to fill a financial black hole than raise taxes on working people.
But will she listen?
She and the Prime Minister are too much in thrall to Labour’s left-wing backbenchers who just love spending other people’s money.
So we’ll all have to suffer.
Justified fears
THE hundreds of people protesting against a plan to house 600 migrants in an Army camp near their homes are not right-wing extremists and racists intent on “stoking division”, despite what some deluded MPs might say.
At least Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood recognises that ordinary people are upset at the complete breakdown of the asylum and migration system and are scared by the large number of undocumented young men being dumped on their doorsteps.
Meanwhile, her own department is busy organising the kind of arts and craft classes, sports and well-being sessions for the asylum seekers that local people would love to afford.
And soft-touch judges are falling over themselves to stop failed asylum-seekers and foreign criminals — like the German drug-dealer who can’t speak German — being deported to safe countries.
Ms Mahmood has her work cut out.
Casual insult
SUMMER jobs or Christmas shifts were a valuable introduction to the world of work for many youngsters… a nice little earner.
But such opportunities are being put at risk by the Government’s workers’ rights plan which would force employers to offer casual employees — who work 40 hours a week over the festive period — similar work after the holidays.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is right to warn the legislation would be a “de facto ban on seasonal and flexible work”.
You don’t protect workers by destroying their work opportunities.
