Lost decades
WE are now in a new cost of living crisis — or perhaps we never really escaped the first one.
A dismal report yesterday revealed family incomes are £20,000 less than they should have been had economic growth in the UK not flatlined after 2005.
GettyChancellor Rachel Reeves’s policies have been driving inflation and entrenching the economy[/caption]
It means Brit households have effectively lived through two lost economic decades.
Covid, the credit crunch, war in Europe and energy price shocks were hammer blows.
But inflation is now firmly entrenched in the economy thanks to Rachel Reeves’s policies, which have directly driven up prices.
Her National Insurance rise has left hard-pushed customers facing bigger bills at the tills, as shops were forced to pass on huge extra costs.
Unnecessary Net Zero measures only add to the misery.
The irony is that yesterday’s report on living standards was by the Left-leaning Resolution Foundation.
Many of its former members are now sitting in Downing Street as key advisers to the Prime Minister and Treasury.
Yet most of their ideas to fix the economy are based on seizing ordinary people’s hard-earned savings, property taxes and taxing the rich so highly they flee the country.
Big business is already warning of the folly of this outdated 1970s-style approach.
Don’t do it, Chancellor.
Action, not talk
NEW Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood says she will not allow migrants to avoid deportation through bogus last minute claims that they are the victims of modern slavery.
She insists these “vexatious” appeals make a mockery of our laws.
Of course, she is right that migrants are gaming a broken asylum system.
But for all her tough talk, how exactly does she plan to do it?
Successive Home Secretaries have promised to do “whatever it takes” to secure our borders.
All have foundered on the immovable rock that is European human rights laws.
Those same laws which are defended to the hilt by her cabinet colleague, Attorney General Lord Hermer.
We wish Ms Mahmood well. But it’s actions that count.
Hope & glory
FOR all the talk of trade deals and tariffs worth billions there is one British institution that remains priceless.
Our Royal Family — such a vital asset to this country — once again totally charmed the world’s most powerful man, Donald Trump.
Amid the doom and gloom it’s good to remember that no-one does pomp and pageantry quite like us Brits.
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