IF YOU’RE IN A HOLE, stop digging. That’s a phrase the Tories seem to have forgotten this month as squabbling Ministers make it every plainer that the Tory Government is having a hard time.
Theresa May must be running out of “sad face” stickers to put on her Ministers’ report cards as they line up to speak on each others’ portfolios and give contradictory messages on Brexit. No wonder Theresa May was smiling so broadly when she got to sit next to Donald Trump and look like a head of government for a while.
The latest Minister to step out of line is David Davis, who is supposed to be in charge of negotiating Brexit. At present the plan is that the UK will leave the EU on 29th March 2019 and there will then be a two year transition period.
Davis has now announced that the UK will be able to set up trade arrangements with non-EU countries during this transition period. This has offended the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, who said that any chance in UK-EU trade relations could be “very modest”. The Prime Minister is not impressed by Davis’s comments – and has let it be known that he has departed from the line which she has decided the Government should take.
The whole row makes the Tories look like a family undergoing a turbulent divorce – plotting and scheming over who will get the family silver at a time when the public might be hoping they could sort out the NHS and deal with dodgy firms that are siphoning cash out of the public sector.
In contrast, Jeremy Corbyn’s team is remaining on message – delivering hit after political hit on those precise areas where the public most wants to see something being done.
The latest issue to heave into their sights is Universal Credit – a legacy of the Tories’ brief affair with the Lib-Dems, which the Tories have now implemented with their customary ineptitude. The Office for Budgetary Responsibility (which checks that the Government is being sensible about public spending) has just issued a Welfare Trends Report (which looks at spending on welfare benefits).
Here’s what Debbie Abrahams MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, had to say about it. “This report reveals the chaos of the Government’s flagship Universal Credit programme and the devastating impact Tory cuts to social security are having on the lives of millions of people. In uncharacteristically strong language, this report reveals the complete disarray of the Tories’ Universal Credit programme, which represents a “significant risk” to public spending.
“Cuts to Universal Credit have undermined the original principles of making work pay and reducing poverty. Families, disabled people and the self-employed are bearing the brunt of these failings. The Tories must halt the roll out of Universal Credit and carry out urgent reform to fix these fundamental flaws.”
Her Majesty’s Official Opposition seems rather more on the ball than the Government.
•The Welfare Trends Report is available here: Welfare Trends Report
•Read more about it: Corbyn urges Tories not to take UK to war with Korea Corbyn furious as Tories fail us on NHS
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