My answer would be that just over half of the voting population (mainly the older ones) believed the fantasy economics of Boris Johnson’s Brexit programme not long ago.
Derek Ayling
Woodling Crescent, Godshill
New Forest West West MP Sir Desmond Swayne; Reform UK leader and Clacton MP Nigel Farage (Image: UK Parliament, Jeff Moore/PA) In his Forest Journal column, Sir Desmond wrote:
In Kipling’s poem, he observed: “The burnt fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire.”
I wonder that anyone who has witnessed political events for the last 15 years could fall for the fantasy economics of Nigel Farage’s Reform programme announced only a few days ago.
The lesson of the disastrous Truss premiership was the promise of tax cuts, accompanied not by matched restraint in expenditure but, on the contrary, further borrowing and spending.
Despite this bitter experience and the lessons that it ought to have taught us, we find that Reform has moved sharply to the left in a bidding war with the Labour Party to outspend them on welfare by ending the two-child limit.
In addition, Reform has promised £80 billion of tax cuts, to be paid for by reducing waste, ‘wokery,’ and scrapping Net Zero.
The savings will be paltry and it is not entirely clear how much might be spared by cancelling Net Zero, given that most of it is to be driven by private sector investment.
In any event, the Net Zero policy is, I believe, vital for our future security and prosperity.
The difficulty with it is not one of principle, but of the nature and speed of its implementation. In the end, it comes down to this.
Given our recent experience, are we really going to be taken in by a politician offering us eye-watering tax cuts without the most detailed and credible explanation of how they are to be afforded?