Rachel Reeves must ensure today's Budget isn't the most damaging in years regardless of her desperation for funds
10/29/2024 08:01 PM
Budget riddle
TODAY will see the most significant Budget in years and potentially the most damaging.
Rachel Reeves must ensure it isn't, regardless of her desperation for funds.
Since before the election she has vowed not to hammer "working people".
Nothing could do so more instantly than ending the 14-year fuel duty freeze won for Britain by The Sun's Keep It Down campaign. It would fleece every driver of about £4 each time they fill up.
Britain is united in opposition to that, a clamour the Chancellor would be crazy to defy. But, that aside, there will be plenty more tax rises.
Our overall burden was already at a shameful 70-year peak under the last Government. Labour made hay with that. Yet here they are, choosing to raise it further while blaming the Tories.
Labour claim this Budget will "fix the foundations" of a crumbling country. So it is baffling to see the NHS once again poised for another massive cash injection NOT tied to the reforms Health Secretary Wes Streeting says are vital for any new money to have an effect.
The Tories raised NHS funding to unprecedented levels. It is not the answer. It locks us into higher taxes forever.
How will a high-tax, high-regulation, low-productivity Britain ever double its growth, as Keir Starmer says he wants?
Quite the puzzle, which we hope Ms Reeves is ready to solve.
UN's disgrace
NO ONE wants more suffering in Gaza. Aid must continue to flow in.
But how can our Government, or any UN member, seriously blame Israel for its rage over the discredited UNRWA agency? It largely appears indistinguishable from Hamas.
Some of its staff joined the October 7 terrorists. Others celebrated those racist murders, rapes and kidnappings. UNRWA "teachers" moulded generations of Gazan kids into Jew-hating killers.
Foreign Office Minister Anneliese Dodds insists Israel must let UNRWA carry on in Gaza. Why should it?
Yes, Israel needs concrete plans to keep food and medicine coming in.
But UNRWA's days in Gaza should surely be over.
Our islands
SINCE 1982 Argentina has known Britain would never give up the Falklands. Suddenly, though, it has hope.
Why? Because Labour handed our Chagos Islands to Mauritius — a country, like Argentina, with no valid claim. We are even paying them for the privilege.
Our Government naively believed it would earn us "soft power" globally.
It made us a laughing stock. And Argentina's leader Javier Milei now fancies he could work a similar deal.
Labour has vowed to stand by our Falkland Islanders unflinchingly. Good.
PM, tell Milei directly: No. No. No.
