Jeremy Hunt’s plan to keep No Deal as a fallback and get Britain as ready we can makes total sense
Exit strategy
JEREMY Hunt will probably never deliver his Brexit plan. A pity, since it makes sense.
The EU has to know for the first time that we are serious about leaving with No Deal if Brussels maintains the fiction that it cannot offer anything more.
Their deal with Theresa May is dead.
Ireland’s posturing PM Leo Varadkar loves hearing himself say Britain must swallow it — but our MPs won’t.
So Hunt is right to say that if nothing else is forthcoming by September 30, we will end negotiations and spend a month making final preparations for a rocky exit. An emergency Budget. Huge sums found to keep certain industries afloat. Civil service holidays scrapped.
Hunt, though, is unlikely to become PM. And if he does we doubt even he believes he would preside over No Deal.
Boris Johnson is more likely to do both — and must have a similar strategy. It was crazy that Mrs May did not.
Today Dominic Grieve’s bid to block No Deal by threatening to inflict poverty on millions may be put to a vote. Labour may back it. Good luck explaining that to pensioners and those on benefits.
No Deal remains the fallback. Let’s be as ready as we can.
No to secrecy
SIR Cliff Richard and DJ Paul Gambaccini are innocent men who were falsely accused and shamefully treated by the police and the BBC.
But they are wrong to demand anonymity until charge for suspected sex offenders.
Had paedophile TV star Stuart Hall not been named on his arrest he might have swatted away the three claims against him and lived on as a national treasure. Publicity triggered a flood of new accusations, proving a pattern of behaviour.
Likewise for cab rapist John Worboys.
We greatly sympathise with Cliff and Paul. But the answer must not be an affront to open justice which risks the guilty getting away with crimes.
It is for police to be less credulous as they sort fantasists from victims, to charge or clear suspects far more rapidly and to punish all false accusers.
Secrecy is not the solution.
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Cuckoo Corbyn
LABOUR’S limitless self-harm continues.
Taxing children for parental gifts is a sucker punch for young middle-class urban Remainers — rapidly becoming Labour’s core vote — who rely on mum and dad to help them buy or rent.
And the working class face punishment too. The pensions of 300,000 ex-miners, British Coal and British Steel workers will be trashed by Labour’s cut-price nationalisation of the private utilities they’re invested in.
Labour detests the rich. But their politics of envy now alienate all classes.
Oh, and Leavers. And Remainers.
No wonder they’re nose-diving in the polls.
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