DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Rishi must reverse narrative of decline

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Rishi must reverse narrative of decline

After soaking up a week of negative headlines, Rishi Sunak tried to get back on the front foot yesterday, saying he was ‘fired up’ for the election and ready to show his mettle.

On the eve of the G20 summit in India, the Prime Minister was bullish about Britain’s economic prospects.

And with some justification. Although drowned out by all the sound and fury this week over supposedly crumbling schools and porous prisons, a remarkable set of ONS figures showed the UK’s GDP to be nearly 2 per cent higher than previously thought.

This completely rewrites the narrative of this country having teetered on the edge of recession since Covid. In fact the economy had already surpassed pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021.

So rather than being the sick man of Europe, Britain turns out to be one of the fittest, comfortably outstripping Germany and comparing favourably with France and Italy.

If the Government is to change the narrative from one of decline and mismanagement to one of optimism for the future, its communications must be better and more confident

Allied to falling inflation and energy bills and a prediction from the Bank of England that interest rates were at, or almost at their peak, this could be the turning point in the cost-of-living crunch.

Yet there was little fanfare, even from Downing Street.

A bland statement from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, a passing reference at Prime Minister’s Questions and, of course, barely a mention from the resolutely anti-Tory broadcast media. Just imagine the feeding frenzy at the BBC if UK growth had been revised down by 2 per cent. It would have seemed like Armageddon.

If the Government is to change the narrative from one of decline and mismanagement to one of optimism for the future, its communications must be better and more confident.

The schools concrete fiasco is a case in point. Buildings across the public and private sector are affected and the Department for Education did the right thing in taking emergency measures when it did.

But thanks in large part to Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s foul-mouthed attempt to duck any blame, Labour has been allowed to make hay.

Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that children were ‘cowering’ in their classrooms and education union leader Geoff Barton’s assertion that the Conservatives ‘don’t care’ about schools are both preposterous.

The Department of Education did the right thing in taking the emergency measures to tackle RAAC in schools when it did, but thanks to Gillian Keegan’s foul-mouthed attempt to duck blame, Labour has been allowed to make hay

A national manhunt has ben launched for Daniel Khalife, who escaped on Wednesday from Wandsworth prison (pictured)

But unless immediately and vigorously challenged, mud sticks.

Similarly with the Wandsworth prison break. This was the simplest of escapes, in which an inmate strapped himself under a departing delivery lorry. Even the most basic check would have stopped it.

Labour and the prison officers’ union suggest it was to do with understaffing. Poppycock! The security checkpoint was fully staffed at the time. The problem was that the staff who were there didn’t do their job.

So yes, it’s good that Mr Sunak is fired up and ready for the general election fight. He must now inject the same urgency and sense of purpose into his Cabinet and communications team. Right now, many of them don’t seem to be up to the task.

The price of power

Almost everyone piling into the Government over its failure to find anyone to construct its planned new offshore wind farms has one thing in common – they don’t have to account for taxpayers’ money.

It is said the price guaranteed to potential developers for the energy they would provide was set too low. If so, ministers must try again to come up with a mutually acceptable figure.

But a cautious approach is surely better than flinging public money at the problem. As Labour’s disastrous Private Finance Initiatives proved, bad spending decisions can reverberate down the years – leaving future generations to pick up the tab.

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