Wad a result
WE could not be prouder that our epic Keep It Down campaign has now saved Brits £100billion in fuel duty.
That’s £100billion NOT pilfered from hard-up drivers’ pockets.
It’s £100billion they have been able instead to spend on essentials for them and their families, to improve their lives, to plough back into the economy.
To the political Left it’s £100billion wickedly withheld from public services by successive Chancellors, Tory and now Labour.
But that’s not how the public sees it.
In a new poll, freezing duty for the 14th year was the most popular measure in a Budget notably short of them.
Rachel Reeves had one eye on instability in the Middle East potentially raising oil prices.
A 7p-a-litre tax hike would have been even more painful then.
But she also simply accepts the wisdom of the campaign we have run with FairFuel: That fuel duty directly clobbers working people.
And after all its promises, Labour could not be seen doing that so openly.
New Tories
BACK in July it didn’t much matter who ended up leading the Tory MPs who survived the election rout. It does now.
Labour’s dismal start has given the Opposition a hope they dared not dream of back then.
They figure that if Labour turned a poll deficit into a huge majority in 2½ years, they can do so in five.
They will need to show they have left behind their scandal-prone, fractious, dithering past for steady competence, united behind properly Conservative principles.
They will need a firm plan to end illegal immigration and slash our overwhelming legal migration numbers.
They must take the fight to a Government seemingly addicted to ever higher taxes and greater union power — by pledging low taxes, less regulation and a strategy to liberate the economy in 2029.
All of those can combat the rise of Reform, perhaps the greatest obstacle between them and a return to power.
Whether it’s Kemi Badenoch or Robert Jenrick today, we wish them luck.
A czar is born
WE couldn’t help wondering if the Government’s choice for its “Value For Money” czar was an in-joke. Sadly not.
David Goldstone has held senior posts at the MoD, the Parliament restoration project, the London Olympics and HS2, all notorious for vast overspending.
Is the Government SURE he’s the right man?
And if value for money is so important, how can it not find him more than a day’s work a week on it . . . while paying him £950 a time?
Still, Mr Goldstone can hit the ground running and save £50,000 right away.
By firing himself.