If growth really was the Government’s No1 priority it would now ditch two obvious drags on it
Not a grower
THE tone of Rachel Reeves’ “Spring statement” was that most things are going swimmingly, the plan for growth is on track and anything else is the wicked Tories’ fault.
The Chancellor’s problem is that no one’s buying that. As opinion polls attest, voters know Britain is in a mess — and it’s Labour they hold most to blame.
Much of her speech was rendered irrelevant anyway by the OBR, whose speculative and erratic forecasts carry such bizarre weight with the Government. It halved our predicted 2025 growth to a dismal one per cent.
And that is before the potentially lethal blow to businesses, already braced for the looming jobs tax, from the crippling new workers’ rights package.
Without stellar growth we are in for more grim years and bleaker Budgets. And there is none on the horizon.
We do commend the Chancellor for resisting raising taxes yet further — for now.
Also for her focus on defence, for opening a redundancy scheme for the vastly overstaffed civil service and for the planning reforms which really could help growth and change lives.
But it was foolish to blame everyone else, from Trump’s tariffs to the Tories.
The economy Ms Reeves inherited from Rishi Sunak was fragile, but stable and growing healthily, as was business confidence. Her tax-raising October Budget put everything into reverse.
If growth really was the Government’s No1 priority it would now ditch two obvious drags on it — Net Zero and the new workers’ and unions’ rights.
The former is a monumental act of self-harm. The latter, a reward for Labour’s union paymasters, looked damaging enough in more optimistic times.
Now it looks positively unhinged.
Stop the rot
WE are just five days from two-tier justice becoming official, with courts told by the Sentencing Council to give greater leniency to criminals from minorities.
Now the same quango intends to slash jail terms for border offences, sparing illegal migrants automatic deportation.
These liberal judges are effectively making laws as they go. What will Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood do to prevent the two-tier justice she has denounced? Or this fresh outrage?
Downing Street must act, and fast.
Hard lessons
PROFESSOR Kathleen Stock railed bravely against trans activism years before sanity on gender became fashionable again.
She insisted that trans women were not, in fact, women and that women-only spaces should be protected from men.
Fanatics hounded her from her job at Sussex University, where free speech is apparently valued only if it aligns with woke Marxism.
Gratifyingly, the uni has now been fined £585,000 by its regulator.
Go woke, go broke. Works every time.