Comment
DAN WOOTTON
Rishi has ridden to the rescue again – now we need to get out there and spend
HE’S done it again!
For the third time in just over six months, our financial Superman Rishi Sunak has ridden to the rescue of the economy.
But it’s about to get harder, much harder. The money tree funding the job-saving furlough scheme is about to be chopped down.
Unemployment will inevitably skyrocket, just at a moment when so many Brits have got used to staying at home and saving their pennies for a rainy day.
That’s why the onus needs to start moving to folk who are lucky enough to have a job and no serious health issues, allowing someone like me to go out and try and get the sputtering economy moving again.
After my talkRADIO show yesterday, I walked all around central London. It disturbed me how much of a ghost town it remains, with the hustle and bustle erased even with lockdown restrictions so dramatically loosened.
Sure, some of the pubs and restaurants are now open. But in the vast majority there were only a few people inside, nothing approaching even 50 per cent capacity.
That’s why the government’s innovative plans to kick-start the economy are so sensible: They reward folk who choose to responsibly return to normal life.
Amen to VAT on hospitality and tourism being slashed from 20 per cent to five per cent until January 12.
Amen to the Eat Out to Help Out discount at restaurants on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays in August.
And amen to the immediate cut in stamp duty on anything under £500,000 until March 31 next year.
Labour’s response today was pathetic. It’s never enough for Keir Starmer and his gang of doom merchants who seem to think Rishi Sunak can write a blank cheque every other week.
And what’s the plan of Captain Hindsight, as Boris Johnson brilliantly branded him today at PMQs? Raise our taxes, of course!
As the Tories have become the party of jobs, Labour has embraced its reputation as the party of taxes. Even though that would add further devastation to the economy at this critical time.
Rishi is right to talk about “the nobility of work” and make it this government’s mission to get as many people back to fruitful employment as soon as realistically possible.
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