Jeremy Hunt must show in Budget he has plan to curb spending and ease tax burden on workers
Hunt must act
JEREMY Hunt is in a bind.
On the one hand the Chancellor has the gloomsters in the Office For Budget Responsibility warning there is no head-room for significant tax cuts.
On the other, he has much of the country — and his party — desperate for them.
As he and the Prime Minister thrash out whether to slash income tax by 2p they should remember the OBR has a habit of having to revise its forecasts.
Meanwhile, their crucial Spring Budget simply must show action to curb spending.
It’s nonsense for the Left to insist we are living in an age of austerity.
The tax burden on workers is the highest in modern times while endless billions are frittered away by incompetent public sector managers.
Our bloated, unreformed NHS swallows more money than it ever has while welfare spending has gone through the roof since Covid.
Worklessness has become a new normal.
A Tory government priding itself on sound money should never find itself on such a futile merry-go-round.
The Chancellor and PM must show on Wednesday they have a plan to end it.
An own goal
FOR too long we have been too soft in dealing with extremism.
It’s no surprise that Britain now faces its gravest terror threat for two decades.
Thugs have been allowed to call for jihad on our streets for months.
As Robert Jenrick rightly points out, police crack down hard on football hooligans — yet leave Islamist extremists unmolested.
It’s part of a pattern of failing to deliver proper punishment to those terror-sympathisers bent on destroying our freedoms.
What happened to the hate preachers at several mosques filmed calling for Jews to be killed in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attacks?
Three months on, police are still investigating or awaiting a CPS charging decision.
Extremism will flourish for as long as it’s allowed to fester.
Don’t ditch Drake
SIR Francis Drake was a hero who helped save England from invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588.
He also — as was common in the ruling classes many centuries ago — owned slaves.
And so the wokerati who infest our schools and public institutions declare he must be erased.
How are children supposed to learn about their country’s place in history and the world amid such self-defeating censorship.
It’s piling ignorance on stupidity.
And it isn’t fair on our kids.