PM is taking a dangerous gamble by hoping Labour MPs back her Brexit plan
Can Theresa May really trust the supposedly sensible wing of the Labour Party to make up the numbers on the final deal?
THERESA May is taking a dangerous gamble in disregarding her own Commons allies and hoping dozens of Labour MPs side with her over Brexit.
We understand her desperation to avoid no-deal.
It would be damaging for both sides, which is why German and Spanish businesses are panicking.
But to challenge the DUP to like her deal or lump it, when they are openly threatening to defeat the Budget, looks reckless.
Even if they don’t, she still needs their votes to govern post-Brexit.
And can the Prime Minister really trust the supposedly sensible wing of the Labour Party to make up the numbers on the final deal?
The worst of it, though, is agreeing to stay in the EU’s Customs Union “temporarily” but with no firm exit date.
It is simply dishonest to spend two years talking up our golden opportunities to embrace global free trade and new industries if you know that, in reality, we could be trapped forever in a deal that snuffs them out.
We MUST be out of the Customs Union by the next election.
Our future and the Government’s survival depend on it.
Tax betrayal
NOTHING is more toxic to a party’s fortunes than betraying promises to voters.
Brown did it. Clegg too. Theresa May doesn’t seem to have learned the lesson.
Announcing that “austerity is over” looks hasty. Corbyn will throw it back at her whenever ANY spending is cut.
The same goes for the PM’s manifesto pledges to cut tax on “businesses and working families”.
Chancellor Philip Hammond plainly intends the opposite to fund her NHS splurge.
The Tories claim “we will always be a party of low tax”. How, with the overall burden already at a 30-year high?
Hard Labour
FOR all the gloom, it could be worse. We could be victims of John McDonnell’s socialist fantasy, as the children dying of hunger in Venezuela are.
Inflation there has hit ten million per cent. Yes, you read that right.
The squalor and misery are almost unimaginable. Yet just four years ago the Shadow Chancellor rejoiced that the once-rich South American country was now experiencing “socialism in action”.
The warning signs of collapse were already there. Essentials were running out. Renationalisations, price controls, the trampling on the rule of law and lack of private investment saw to that.
McDonnell ignored it all. And he won’t care one bit if we suffer such horrors too. His lifelong dream is to unleash the same lunatic experiment here.
Voters, and Labour’s own more moderate MPs, must never give him that chance.