Like Tories a decade ago, Labour need to show some steel to turn round number of ‘inactive’ Brits… and they know it
Sick Britain
FIRST the good news.
Unemployment has fallen to just 4.2 per cent. And wages are still going up by 5.4 per cent, well ahead of inflation at two per cent. Living standards are rising.
These figures are from April to June — so they are a Tory achievement. But equally the Tories cop the blame for the bad news: The 9.41million “inactive” Brits neither in work nor seeking it.
The surge in that figure since Covid shames successive Tory PMs.
Especially given that it was Tory toughness on benefits which solved the same crisis in the 2010s, improving millions of lives.
Many of this new number are genuinely ill, physically or mentally, and awaiting NHS care. Others know they could work — but choose idleness, funded by overly-generous benefits.
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Like the Tories a decade ago, Labour will need to show some steel to turn it round . . . and they know it. Can they brave the uproar if they cut welfare or impose strict new conditions?
It’s their only option, if growth is still their priority.
Russia’s ruin
THE gulf between Putin’s bullying bluster and the bleakness of his reality has never been more stark.
The Russian tyrant vowed to conquer Ukraine in four days. He threatened to nuke its Western allies who stood in his way.
He set out a mad dream of a new Kremlin-run empire stretching across Europe to the western shores of Portugal.
Now, after two and a half years, he remains stalled at the first hurdle — and 200,000 Russians have been evacuated from Kyiv’s daring counter-invasion into Kursk and Belgorod.
Online trolls pile on the humiliation by mocking Russian restaurants for having insufficient parking for Ukrainian tanks.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke.
Only a fool now would confidently predict the course of this disastrous war. But there are plenty around — not least those who claimed Russia was a mighty military power which could rapidly sweep all before it.
It is in fact a broken nation run by thieves and gangsters taking orders from a paranoid, megalomaniacal fantasist.
Will anyone ever restore sanity there?
Lost legend
THE terrible last moments of England cricket legend Graham Thorpe make harrowing reading.
We will remember him as a fantastic and popular player, a Test and one-day stalwart of the 1990s and beyond . . . a dependable yet often swashbucklingly brilliant batsman.
But talent, honours, fame and even a loving family sometimes offer little protection when severe depression sets in.
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Our hearts go out to his wife and children.
RIP Thorpey.