Philip Hammond has lost his mind if he hikes fuel duty to fund Theresa May’s £20billion NHS cash pledge
Had our Phil
PHILIP Hammond has made grievous errors as Chancellor. But he has truly lost his mind if he intends to hike fuel duty to fund the £20billion-a-year NHS splurge.
Petrol and diesel are staggeringly expensive already.
They have risen by 25p a litre in two years.
Duty has been frozen since 2011 but is still among the highest in the world.
Higher pump prices stoke inflation, slow the economy and hurt everyone from motorists to hauliers to shoppers.
“The Conservative Party always will be a low-tax party,” Theresa May said last year.
Only last year Theresa May said the Conservative Party would always be a low-tax party - what happened to that?
What is the point of Mr Hammond’s Tories if not to let voters keep more of their money?
Our Chancellor is deaf to public opinion. His underlings glibly talk about everyone chipping in. Yet targeting struggling families is political cowardice. The international aid budget is now so vast that even the Secretary of State in charge cannot justify it.
Cut it by two-thirds to fund the NHS. And get your hands out of families’ pockets.
Merkel misery
WHAT a humiliation for Angela Merkel.
She has gone from warmly welcoming a million migrants to agreeing to stick them in virtual prison camps.
And she has proved that, for all its stonewalling over Brexit, the EU’s most powerful nation makes up rules as it goes along if they will save her skin.
Forget free movement into Germany.
If you’re an asylum seeker who registered first in another EU nation, you’ll be locked up then kicked back out.
Got that?
Detention centres at the Austrian border, but nothing — not even a camera — can be installed at the Irish border, according to Brussels.
Mrs Merkel has learned a painful lesson. Across the continent millions are sick of having no control over the numbers entering their country.
Theresa May must not forget it.
When her Remainer Business Secretary Greg Clark says we must maintain free movement of workers, that is NOT control. “Free movement” is the giveaway.
If our Government cannot regulate the flow, it will have failed on immigration.
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Grope scandal
There was no credible evidence to support the groping claim against the ex-Westminster special adviser.
But they put him through 15 months of torture which wrecked his life and career.
Their case fell to bits and a bemused jury cleared him in minutes.
The CPS and police have a disgraceful recent record for trying to prosecute the flimsiest of sex cases.
Even so, how did this one ever get before a judge?