We are hurtling towards an economic emergency – the Stupid Party need to choose a Prime Minister NOW
WHILE the Stupid Party is busy rearranging the deckchairs, SS Great Britain is steaming headlong towards the biggest crash since the Great Depression of 1929.
This is not just a cost-of-living crisis. It is a national economic emergency.
We are on the brink of a full-blown calamity of wartime proportions, with soaring bankruptcies and unemployment, poverty and homelessness.
Belt-tightening won’t cut it.
This country cannot wait four more weeks for the Tories to decide who might lead us through it.
Without what Churchill called “Action This Day”, millions of hardworking families — including Sun readers — face hunger and destitution for the first time in living memory.
READ MORE ON COST OF LIVING
Yet as this terrifying prospect unfolds, Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi, his deputy Simon Clarke and current PM Boris Johnson are away, and the Cabinet is embroiled in a leadership scramble.
Unless someone wakes up fast and grabs the helm, we face a catastrophe for which the Tories will never be forgiven.
The Bank of England’s belated warning of 13 per cent inflation understates the tsunami heading our way.
Interest rates have jumped 0.5 percentage points, with the same again likely next month and more to come.
Most read in The Sun
Governor Andrew Bailey — a historian, not an economist — predicts a 15-month recession.
In the real world, money men say the UK economy is heading for years of high unemployment and mass bankruptcies unless there is massive government intervention.
“It will make the 2008 banking meltdown and the 1973 Oil Shock look like tea parties,” says one.
Alarm bells
“We need more than fiddling with tax cuts or bungs to householders struggling to pay their fuel bills.
“This requires urgent and decisive action across the board — a multi-billion-pound declaration of war to stop those bills rising.”
In other words, an emergency cap to hold energy prices down at all costs. Now.
Paul Drexler, of the International Chamber of Commerce, warns people are “already hungry and can’t heat their homes”.
He says: “There is a real and present danger for the poorest in UK society — about seven million people. They are heading for a financial crisis of epic proportions in September.
“There is a very immediate challenge . . . how to support these people who are already hungry. If we don’t tackle it urgently, we will pay a much higher price later.”
There is a real and present danger for the poorest in UK society — about seven million people.
Paul Drexler, of the International Chamber of Commerce
Former PM Gordon Brown, who steered Britain through the 2008 meltdown, rang alarm bells yesterday by demanding an “emergency Budget” this week.
Meanwhile, 180,000 Conservative Party members are taking until September 5 to pick a new PM.
By then the average cost of fuel, food and mortgages will be soaring by a breathtaking £4,610 out of taxed income, with £3,359 gobbled up in energy bills alone.
Nobody on £26,000 average pay can afford this sort of hit, still less pensioners on fixed incomes. Law-abiding citizens are already being lured by the burgeoning Won’t Pay protest lobby — a recipe for anarchy.
Treasury coffers are empty after squandering hundreds of billions on the Covid lockdown.
Yet money must be found — and fast. “Perhaps as many as 12million people are going into real poverty,” says one seasoned economic analyst.
Sticking plasters
“These are not people on the fringes, but those — like Sun readers — at the core of society.
“No government can let ten to 12million people go to the dogs.
“This is urgent. We can’t wait until September 5. We must cap the energy price now and pay for that cap later.
“We should also suspend VAT on fuel.”
So far, ministers have tinkered, offering £400 off household energy bills, boosting the winter fuel allowance by £300 and promising to reverse NI hikes.
These are like sticking plasters on a burst water main. They will be absorbed and forgotten.
Read More on The Sun
At some point the next PM will be forced to take the unprecedented action required now . . . this week. He or she has a choice — to announce bold and decisive steps immediately and gain the credit.
Or be forced by economic ruin to step in later — and take all the blame.