DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Labour tax raid will kill development in a trice

Every government is predisposed to amplify the woeful state of its financial inheritance. That’s the nature of politics.

But for Rachel Reeves to tell us the fiscal challenge left by the Tories is worse than she thought is both laughable and dishonest.

She admitted before the election that the Treasury’s books were open for all to see.

During the campaign, Labour also told voters it would get Britain building and not raise taxes. 

It’s now clear that their campaign was based on false pretences.

After apparently discovering a £20billion funding shortfall, the Chancellor is set to delay flagship hospital and road-building projects and will consider clobbering motorists by hiking fuel duty.

Wouldn’t it more sensible to plug the gap by cutting – or, better, scrapping – ruinously expensive Net Zero schemes and the swollen foreign aid budget?

Labour says its most important mission is to put the economy on a path to stronger growth.

But slashing infrastructure projects and hiking wealth taxes, especially on entrepreneurs who can take their money elsewhere, would be the wrong response.

Rather than encouraging healthy growth, it would snuff it out in a heartbeat.

A blow to free speech

By shelving laws to protect free speech on campus, the Education Secretary is betraying the very purpose of universities.

They should be places where challenging ideas can be discussed in the search for truth. 

Recently, however, too many students and academics have been hounded for expressing views – usually gender critical – which clash with Left-wing woke orthodoxy.

Under the legislation, universities could have been fined for failing to uphold free speech.

Bridget Phillipson halting it will mean a more chilling climate on campus.

Far from being pro-free speech, this depressing decision suggests Labour is relaxed if all voices of which it disapproves are remorselessly crushed.

JSO’s just sentence

In contrast to Ms Phillipson, the Mail is a passionate defender of free speech.

No one has been more critical than this newspaper of the dangerous and disruptive stunts carried out by Just Stop Oil.

But in the name of debate we today publish a letter by the cult’s leader, Roger Hallam, jailed for five years for his part in immobilising the M25.

He denounces the trial judge as a ‘fanatic’ for not letting him spout climate hysteria to the jury. But that was legally irrelevant.

While accepting people should ‘live under the rule of law’, Hallam and his fellow eco-cranks believe their views entitle them to live outside it. 

Every second of his stiff sentence is thoroughly deserved.

Desertion of Israel

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has rightly condemned a Hezbollah rocket strike that killed 12 Israeli children playing football, but his words nevertheless ring hollow.

This indiscriminate attack demonstrates how Israel is surrounded by enemies eager to wipe it off the map. 

Yet shamefully, Britain is deserting our ally in its hour of need.

As well as dropping objections to the International Criminal Court’s pursuit of Israel’s premier on trumped-up war crimes charges, Labour could block vital weapons sales to Tel Aviv.

This sends a dreadful message. Rather than upset its Muslim voters, Labour is willing to act against our national interest.