Debt deniers
THE economic figures now laid bare by Rishi Sunak are the bleakest in our lifetimes.
It is depressing how many MPs still cannot grasp their severity.
How else to explain their griping over the two decisions the Chancellor took to save money: Cutting foreign aid and temporarily freezing some public sector pay?
It is as if our monstrous Covid debts and their consequences are too mind-boggling for some MPs to process.
Our economy will shrink 11.3 per cent this year, the worst drop in 300 years.
Our annual national overdraft will hit nearly £400billion — far, far worse than even Gordon Brown ran up.
That’s terrifying enough as a one-off.
Except we are likely to borrow £100billion a year for at least four more years.
The austerity decade from 2010, which painfully whittled the deficit down from exactly such heights, has been negated within ten months.
And while the Chancellor’s furlough has saved 300,000 jobs, unemployment will still rocket by more than one million to 2.6million by next summer.
Trending In The News has repeatedly warned of the apocalyptic damage lockdowns do.
Here it is.
Yet, even in the face of this cataclysm, what really matters to Labour is their voters among non-NHS public sector staff not getting a pay rise.
The tsunami of redundancies among private sector workers, and the wage cut they have suffered, trouble the Left far less.
And what really enrages certain Tories is finally reducing the scandalously wasteful aid budget to focus on projects abroad that truly matter — and spending those billions instead on “levelling up” long-neglected regions here.
The fact we will remain the G7’s second largest aid donor cuts no ice with them.
There was a little good news: A predicted rapid recovery in growth once the vaccines kick in — and interest rates on our vast borrowings at record lows.
Great . . . until they rise. What then?
Our debts must one day be paid.
From yesterday’s performative outrage, some MPs intend to oppose every single sensible saving we will need to make.
What planet are they on?
Tiers of rage
WHAT case is there for inflicting new Tier 3 curbs on great swathes of the country?
They are a death sentence for pubs, restaurants and other venues.
And a massive, unfair curtailing of our liberties.
Boris must err on the side of freedom and the economy today.
Cases are falling rapidly in large areas — and the damage is already bad enough.
RIP, maestro
CHEAT? Genius?
Maradona was certainly both in that infamous 1986 World Cup tie.
But he should mainly be remembered as the latter — a staggering, if flawed, talent who inspired millions of kids.
We have to hand you that, Diego.
