We salute Jeremy Hunt for freezing fuel duty and extending the 5p cut – it’s the right call for drivers and for Britain

Sun you win

WERE it not for The Sun, drivers would pay roughly £16.50 more each time they fill up the family car.

That may sound a bold claim.

But it is the result of a 14-year fuel duty freeze brought about by our wildly successful Keep It Down campaign.

Seven Tory Chancellors have cursed us for it.

To them it has “cost” £90billion in tax they would love to have spent.

But it has saved Britain’s motorists that vast sum — and will continue to do so tomorrow when Jeremy Hunt not only freezes the levy again in his Budget but rightly extends the 5p cut for another year.

He would be bonkers to do otherwise, since higher fuel costs are a huge drag on a fragile economy.

But we salute Mr Hunt for it anyway.

It must be galling to know there’s so little to gain from it politically.

The public has come to expect fuel duty not to rise with inflation.

He won’t be thanked.

But keeping it down is the right call for drivers, for family finances, for businesses and for Britain.

Hold the line

DESPITE enormous pressure to backtrack, Keir Starmer is continuing to insist Israel has a right to defend itself.

We commend him for that.

The Labour Left and even supposedly moderate shadow cabinet figures are desperate for a tougher line.

And the election of the Islamists’ stooge George Galloway in Rochdale has only made that worse.

Labour now knows it may be vulnerable in some seats if enough of its Muslim voters detest its quid-each-way stance.

Admittedly Labour’s position IS pie-in-the-sky, crafted to appease all sides.

It robustly demands an immediate ceasefire by both Israel and Hamas — while stressing that Israel is justified in carrying on if the terrorists won’t permanently give up violence . . . which they have no intention of doing.

But there is no tougher line Starmer can take on Israel without withdrawing support for its right to defend itself and live in peace.

And that is neither right nor credible for a would-be Government.

Labour hardly needs to worry, with a poll lead at 27 points.

But if the polls tighten, the siren voices will become deafening.

Starmer must not bend to the hard-Left.

Herr thick

WE used to need a captured Enigma machine to decode the fiendish Germans’ military secrets.

Now the Luftwaffe’s bungling head blabs them to his mates on a simple video call which the Russians gleefully recorded and put on TV.

It might be funny had he not also alleged that British boots are on the ground in Ukraine.

Nice work, Lieutenant General Dummkopf.