MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Make tax cuts the first of many, Rishi
In our exclusive interview today, Rishi Sunak indicates that tax cuts are very likely in his Spring Statement on Wednesday. Everyone sensible will welcome this. Sometimes the most basic things need restating, but during the pandemic, governments all over the world largely shelved many of the sensible rules of economics.
Of course, that was necessary then, to save jobs and keep businesses alive, and to pay for the counter-offensive against Covid itself.
But now the old rules apply again. And they go like this: people are almost always better than governments at spending their hard-earned incomes.
A Tory Chancellor has to remember that the best governments leave people alone as much as possible
If citizens are allowed to hang on to more of the money they have worked for, they will spend and invest it in ways which benefit the whole country. Seldom has this point been more important.
The small service industries and businesses, which have taken over from the big manufacturers in our economy, badly need us to spend our cash over their counters. Everything from coffee shops to travel firms to the high street has been starved of cash for almost two years.
Reliance on online goods and services, fostered during the Covid crisis, has damaged local shops, theatres and cinemas.
So Mr Sunak will be helping himself, as well as the rest of us, if he ensures that we all have more to spend in such places. If business flourishes, the tax base expands. And that is how we will afford the things government alone can do, such as the repair of the NHS and the rebuilding of our defences in this new world of war and danger.
It is only dogmatic socialists who think tax is good in itself. A Tory Chancellor has to remember that the best governments leave people alone as much as possible. We can only hope that Mr Sunak’s cuts will be generous, and the first of many.
A Royal welcome – and a great act of charity
If members of the Royal Family decide to open their homes to Ukrainian refugees – and it is widely speculated that this is to happen – it will be a very welcome step. Many of us, greatly moved by the plight of refugees from that war-ravaged country, yearn to do something solid to help.
Readers of The Mail on Sunday and our sister paper the Daily Mail certainly do. Our appeal to raise money for refugee charities has already brought in a superb £8 million, and promises to deliver still more.
This generosity has already made life far easier for women and children seeking safety from war, and shows that our kind and charitable civilisation is still very much in being.
When it comes to offering actual space in our homes to Ukrainians, many of us simply cannot manage this in practice, however much we might wish to.
The Royal Family are in a special position. They do possess several large houses and estates, and employ staff to run them
Those who can and do welcome refugees under their own roofs deserve much praise and many blessings.
But we cannot all do this. It is no small thing for busy people in small flats or houses to take in total strangers with no common language, who may be in great distress.
And nobody should feel under any pressure to do so, especially when there are so many other ways in which we can help.
The Royal Family are in a special position. They do possess several large houses and estates, and employ staff to run them.
It is not for us to presume to advise Her Majesty or her family on how to behave or on what to do with their homes. But it would be a superb gesture if they joined in this great act of charity, an action of which the entire nation could be proud, and which would bind Britain and Ukraine together in friendship for many years to come.
Source: Read Full Article
