Labour pains
LABOUR’S shambolic civil war over the big-spending Tory Budget has exposed them as the clueless chancers they are.
First they attacked Philip Hammond’s tax cuts “for the rich”. Then their Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell BACKED him. And for once the sniggering Marxist is politically right.
In some places a £40-50,000 salary seems a fortune. But those on such wages in London and the South-East won’t like being sneered at as “rich”. These are aspirational voters Labour needs.
Yet its leftie class warriors apparently believe it is right to oppose a popular across-the-board tax cut, when the overall burden is its highest in a generation and income inequality the lowest.
Labour just has nothing to say if it can’t caricature Tories as cruel toffs bent on cheating the poor and starving the NHS.
And this Budget, helping 32million workers and massively boosting health funding, has found them out.
A new NHS
THE Sun backs the new NHS money. But Britain cannot keep ploughing in such sums.
In 2000, health swallowed 23 per cent of all state spending. That will soon be 38 per cent. And it will keep climbing — because the population is rapidly increasing, living longer, in worse health and using ever pricier drugs.
How high must it go before politicians, and voters, finally accept the NHS’s efficiency and structure need fundamental reform? When health engulfs 50 or 60 per cent of the total budget, what happens to other public services?
The NHS is a bottomless pit. Reform, maybe including an insurance system for higher earners, looks inevitable.
Will politicians ever find the courage?
Aid outrage
THE fact our foreign aid bill has topped £14billion while our own schools scratch around for essentials is an outrage.
This absurd Cameron-era commitment to donate 0.7 per cent of our GDP forces us to lavish billions on projects abroad, many without merit.
Meanwhile our schools’ emergency bailout was LESS than the annual rise in aid.
The Tories must see sense, slash aid and spend the savings at home. Their next manifesto must promise it.
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Battle begins
AT long last the quest for justice over the IRA’s Hyde Park bombing is under way — thanks to Sun readers’ donations.
Prime suspect John Downey does not have the decency to attend. But following the first hearing yesterday, a civil trial WILL now proceed next year.
Four soldiers died that terrible day in 1982. We and our readers are determined to see justice done for their families.
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