As Britain’s workers get poorer by the day, it’s vital Theresa May get big mandate to lower taxes AND inflation
Prime Minister speaks often of 'just about managings' — but we haven't seen much concrete help so far
LOW pay and the rising cost of living are grave problems Theresa May must urgently address.
It is good to see it on her list of five manifesto aims — because yesterday’s pay figures make depressing reading.
Wages are rising by 2.1 per cent, while inflation is at 2.7.
Britain’s workers are again getting poorer.
In the ten months since she became PM, Mrs May has spoken often about the “just about managings”.
We haven’t seen much concrete help so far.
So it is vital a new Government with a big mandate fulfils on those promises.
That means lower taxes to enable us to keep more of our money.
It means tackling inflation hard, to keep prices down.
We’re all for the higher minimum wage too . . . if it does not kill jobs.
Because employment under the Tories remains an astonishing success, despite Project Fear’s Brexit doom-mongering.
Record numbers are in work and unemployment is at a 42-year low.
That said, the entire 385,000 net rise in employment in the last year was foreign-born labour.
Why? Vacancies are at a record high — yet 1.54 million Brits are still unemployed.
Let’s get them off benefits and into jobs.
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Manifes-d’oh!
IT’S tough to produce a manifesto crazier than Jeremy Corbyn’s but we congratulate the Lib Dems for giving it such a good go.
First up, a massive rise in the welfare bill. Always popular with voters, that.
Next, a ban on diesels guaranteed to alienate millions driving them.
A new tax on fruit juice and decent coffee: another winner.
A £1billion tax on the cannabis they must have been smoking as they wrote.
And a second Brexit referendum to give us all a chance to vote in the manner officially approved of by Tim Farron and Nick Clegg.
Of course, if and when we again voted to leave the EU they would blame the Press or a mildly misleading bus and demand a THIRD go.
The Lib Dems aren’t aiming for power — merely targeting niche groups of voters, hoping to improve on their near-death experience in 2015.
That looks like folly with so many Remainers now also wanting to get on with Brexit.
Polls say Farron could even lose some of his tiny band of surviving MPs.
No wonder.
Cheque mate
BANKERS aren’t exactly the most popular of people.
But Lloyds chief António Horta-Osório should be an exception.
Not just because the Portuguese boss has paid taxpayers back, with a hefty profit, for the bank’s bailout in 2008.
But because he loves “remarkable, dynamic” Britain so much he has become a UK citizen . . . and thinks Brexit will be the making of us.
It certainly will be — if the City and big business ape his can-do spirit.