Rishi, it falls to you to cure the national malaise Covid has spread – what have you got?
Sick Britain
COVID wasn’t just deadly and traumatic. It was a disaster for our national mindset.
The bailouts, needed to keep us afloat, embedded in too many people a disdain for work. It convinced them the state really would pay them to do nothing.
A staggering 2.5million are too sick for a job, costing billions in benefits.
The young cite mental health issues. Older staff have back troubles, some caused — incredibly — by working from home.
Many cases are of course entirely genuine. But how many others could work if it was not as easy as it is to avoid it?
This entitlement culture is spreading to some workplaces and local councils.
One Lib Dem authority has gifted its staff a four-day week, on the same pay, despite it provably short-changing locals hit by council tax rises.
The defiant, go-it-alone, entrepreneurial national spirit which backed Brexit in 2016 is a distant memory.
Even our Government seems to lack it.
Instead of training Brits and raising pay, as planned, it lazily imports an ever-swelling legion of immigrants to fill vacancies, exactly as Labour did.
The mind-boggling new net migration total, released soon, will rightly cause outrage.
Britain is infamously poor at building infrastructure or expanding public services, let alone for a population sky-rocketing as ours now is.
A Labour Government would entrench this national malaise forever.
It falls to you to cure it, Rishi.
What have you got?
Wrong, Harry
ONE of the many concepts Prince Harry fails to understand is that abandoning royal life has a cost.
He was stunned that his police protection was removed.
This was as complacent a misjudgement as assuming our then Queen would cheerfully let him and Meghan make money on the side while cherry-picking royal jobs.
Harry’s argument now, that he should be able to hire highly-trained armed police bodyguards when he visits Britain, is equally naive.
As the Met says, every celeb will want private cops.
Officers would have to put their lives on the line for anyone rich enough, instead of those judged worthy of such protection in the public interest.
Harry and his family’s safety is crucial. But he can well afford private security.
Our cops should not be for rent.
The write call
THE fact that English kids are now among the best readers in the Western world is a triumph for the Tories.
Their back-to-basics approach, binning trendy teaching methods and reverting to old-school “phonics”, is vindicated.
What a tragedy though if the “progressive” education mob reasserts control.
And ideology is once again prioritised over results — and kids’ life chances.