DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Now put the brake on petrol car ban, PM
No one could accuse Rishi Sunak of being a slow learner.
The Prime Minister has quickly learned the lesson from the Uxbridge by-election: The public supports the worthy ambition to eliminate emissions – but not at any price.
So why is he ploughing on with the unpopular plan to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030?
Families won’t buy expensive electric vehicles with tiny mileage ranges. And with the deadline looming, the charging infrastructure is appalling and there are doubts the National Grid will cope with a huge rise in demand from battery-run cars.
Yes, eco-vehicles are the future. But the cut-off date is unfeasible. It will clobber drivers and harm the economy. It should be pushed back. Even so, the Government’s tangle over electric cars is nothing compared to the mess Keir Starmer is in.
The Prime Minister has quickly learned the lesson from the Uxbridge by-election: The public supports the worthy ambition to eliminate emissions – but not at any price
Just Stop Oil is boasting that its asinine road-blocking protests, which have inflicted misery on millions, have shaped Labour’s policy to ban new drilling in the North Sea – even if it means importing fossil fuels from overseas at higher environmental cost.
Sir Keir’s preposterous virtue-signalling has left him in the pocket of these eco-anarchists. Could a man of such dreadful judgment really be trusted in No10?
Our China crisis
In his first foreign policy speech as Prime Minister, Mr Sunak declared the ‘golden era’ of relations with China was over.
The West, he earlier warned, should no longer ‘roll out the red carpet’ for the repressive Communist regime, nor ‘turn a blind eye to its nefarious activity’.
Unfortunately, the Government’s actions haven’t matched his rhetoric.
It is dispiriting that Foreign Secretary James Cleverly allegedly dismissed Tory MPs’ concern about a minister meeting a Chinese official linked to the snatching of dissidents living in the UK. It was better, he said, to engage with Beijing.
How typical of the arrogant and naive Foreign Office. No one should doubt China poses a huge economic and security threat.
It is dispiriting that Foreign Secretary James Cleverly allegedly dismissed Tory MPs’ concern about a minister meeting a Chinese official linked to the snatching of dissidents living in the UK
Such credulity dates back to David Cameron and George Osborne, who greedily embraced its billions, allowing the regime to embed its apparatchiks in our banks, defence firms, top schools and universities.
Ministers must stop being so hopelessly wide-eyed. China is not a benign economic partner. It is a remorseless tyranny which views us as its long-term enemy.
Classroom clowns
The teaching of controversial and fiercely contested ‘critical race theory’ to school pupils as young as five is completely unacceptable – and hugely damaging.
Telling white children they enjoy ‘privilege’ because of their skin colour, which tacitly encourages youngsters of colour to embrace victimhood, is divisive and dangerous.
That such an insidious ideology has infiltrated British classrooms illustrates how thoroughly the education establishment has been captured by wokery.
In fact, research shows working-class white boys are the most deprived ethnic group in the country. The idea they suffer from ‘privilege’ is nonsensical.
The bottom line is, children aren’t in school to be brainwashed. They are there to master reading, writing and arithmetic.
With £40million of public money so far spent hearing just 23 days of evidence, the Covid inquiry is becoming a bloated exercise in profligacy.
The tribunal’s focus should be on establishing why health bodies left us so unprepared – and whether the economic carnage caused by lockdown was justified in terms of lives saved.
Yet the longer it goes on, the more obvious it turns into a bout of Tory and Brexit-bashing – and a lucrative payday for lawyers.
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