Tangle on tax
WHAT a chaotic, self-inflicted muddle Labour have got into over who Britain’s “working people” are.
This ill-defined class they casually named in opposition will apparently be spared tax hikes in next week’s Budget.
People with shares, significant savings or other assets will be targeted instead.
Except plenty of working people have those. They work hard to afford them. That is aspiration — a concept Labour has traditionally struggled to grasp.
Promises to spare “working people” will of course be meaningless anyway should Rachel Reeves raise fuel duty for the first time in 14 years. That will make everyone poorer.
But many other leaked Budget ideas raise a dangerous spectre.
That of a Government seemingly ready to feather the nests of public sector workers, already enjoying better pay and conditions and vastly greater pensions, at everyone else’s expense.
The BMA doctors union is warning the Chancellor not to hit pensions . . . unless NHS staff are exempted.
She must not go there. Tax favouritism for state workers while hammering the rest will not just kill growth, it will create a divided two-tier nation.
Labour was elected to change and improve Britain. That cannot just be for state workers and their militant unions.
What’s the plan to help us ALL, Sir Keir?
Stubbed out
IF Labour HAS axed the pub garden smoking ban we welcome them seeing sense.
It was a demented idea from public health obsessives with zero regard for the bankruptcies and job losses they would be triggering.
As The Sun said at the time: “No one gets cancer from second-hand smoke OUTSIDE a pub.”
Downing Street seems to have listened. One official says: “It is an unserious policy. Nobody really believes smoking outdoors is a major health problem.”
Oh, but they do: The nanny state meddlers who talked Keir Starmer into it.
Next time, PM, laugh them out of the room.
Royal flush
CAMPAIGNERS for a republic in Australia were strangely happy to see the King and Queen arrive Down Under.
They imagined the royal visit would revive their cause, reminding voters just how distant their Head of State is.
The fact they were 100 per cent wrong is a measure of their delusions — and a triumph for Charles and Camilla, who charmed the Aussies and others during a superb tour.
Even the country’s left-wing government has axed its redundant “Assistant Minister for a Republic”.
There’s no prospect of a new referendum on the monarchy. Republican ambitions look dead now for a generation.
Quite the result, Your Majesty. Good onya.
