Inequality is bound to spiral as Johnson bids to keep Tories sweet...
| Published date | 11 June 2022 |
| Publication title | Huddersfield Daily Examiner |
That's almost exactly the percentage of the rest of the country who think he should go.
In order to firm up this support he is promising the extreme wing of the Tory party tax cuts.
Sounds good, especially as the National Insurance rise begins to bite and prices of food and energy climb by the day.
But what does it really mean? Tax cuts will have to be paid for, so we can kiss goodbye to 'levelling up' and welcome back a form of austerity not unlike the experience of the Cameron/Osborne years.
It is, after all, the same Tory party that has been in power since 2010.
And what do we get for these cuts?
One thing we get is an underfunded NHS in which waiting lists climb to record levels as they did before the pandemic. Budgets promising new hospitals have already been cut.
Local authorities, still reeling after years of cuts, will lose even more of their central government funding - which affect everything from children's services and parks to libraries and road maintenance.
And the tax cut? You can bet the rich will walk away with the greater share of the spoils and levels of inequality - already amongst the worst in Europe - will increase as they did a decade ago. Poverty will continue to rise.
They'll deliver all right. Dave Verguson, Lindley
Monarchy is a political jewel HER Majesty is not immortal and time will follow its inevitable course. There are republican voices becoming more adventurous, in the Caribbean, in Australia and in Canada notably, but in more muted form here in the UK.
The fact is that, in England and latterly the UK, there have been republican sentiments since before the time of Oliver Cromwell and his ultimately ill-fated foray into a supposedly egalitarian
Commonwealth. I understand the arguments, then and now, against the perceived wrongs of hereditary monarchy. I believe that, fundamentally, these arguments are both ill-conceived and dangerous.
In this country we enjoy, and I think that is the correct word, a constitutional monarchy. This has evolved over time, fully flowering under Victoria.
This model of governance has been bolstered by practice and precedent and has proved itself to be remarkably resilient.
Theoretically the monarch, as head of state, has unlimited political power. For example she, or at some future point he, could simply decline to sign any statute into law or could rule by decree.
In practice, any such exercise of a theoretical right is absolutely unimaginable.
The monarch will evermore be "guided" by...
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