Eeyore Chancellor Philip Hammond must encourage businesses to invest in Britain’s future
The Chancellor must lay the groundwork for entrepreneurs to thrive in a newly liberated Britain after Brexit
THE Tories have made a decent start to their conference – but they need to set their ambitions higher.
Last week the Labour Party promised easy answers on everything from housing to the economy. It was a radical, if utterly disastrous, vision for Britain.
The Government changing tipping rules and increasing taxes on foreign property buyers is pretty small beer. Not least since the former was first announced three years ago and the latter is pretty much copied from last year’s Labour manifesto.
Philip Hammond — rarely mistaken for a ray of sunshine — needs to provide light at the end of the austerity tunnel. He must lay the groundwork for entrepreneurs to thrive in a newly liberated, unapologetically free market economy.
And he should challenge business to work with him, too. The self-appointed “voices of British business”, invariably dominated by large corporate interests, push every day for more and more Brexit concessions.
Yet as last week showed, Labour’s unreconstructed Marxism is a far more serious threat to future prosperity than any kind of Brexit.
It’s time for big businesses to play their part in building a better Britain, rather than refighting a referendum which was as much a vote against them as the political establishment.
Eeyore Hammond must encourage them to invest in Britain’s future.
Like the idea
NEW Health Supremo Matt Hancock has made an impressive start.
And his call to produce guidelines on social media use for kids is a welcome step indeed. We are sitting on a mental health timebomb. Too many children — especially girls — define their worth by likes, shares and retweets.
We are at risk of raising a generation that can barely communicate in the real world. The tech firms should have done this themselves, but they long ago gave up on taking responsibility for their behaviour.
Parents have a big role to play, too.
Undie grads
UNIVERSITY student unions have lost the plot.
There’s a difference between sex ed and allowing a “sex workers outreach service” to dish out underwear at a freshers’ fair, as Brighton University did.
MOST READ IN OPINION
Euro uni-tee
CONGRATULATIONS to the victorious European Ryder Cup team.
See what happens when Europe — the continent, not the contrived political union — works together, in good faith?
Let’s hope Brussels is learning lessons…