Labour can't preach about hard choices while spending billions on migrant hotels… tax hikes will see Reform surge higher
EVERY single day, every single penny paid in tax by enough workers to fill a city the size of Manchester goes toward just one thing.
Some 582,000 folk, including nurses, teachers, builders, drivers and shop workers, all striving and contributing their fair share for one goal . . .
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Their entire income tax and National Insurance contributions hoovered up by the same mind-boggling government bill.
They are paying to keep migrants in hotels, often rather nice ones.
The National Audit Office puts the bill for asylum accommodation and support last year at an eye-watering £4.7billion.
And that's before healthcare costs and the price of the thousands of officials processing claims are factored in.
Now, new analysis by former Office for National Statistics numbers man Jamie Jenkins reveals who is picking up the tab.
'Deeply concerned'
The mean average salary across all UK workers was £38,224 last year, generating an estimated £8,081 in tax per head.
Divide the hotel and support bill by that and you get 582,000 workers — almost exactly the population of the City of Manchester.
Or just over the size of Liverpool. Or bigger than Leicester or Leeds.
Last Tuesday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs she was 'deeply concerned about the level of money' being spent on hotels, adding: 'We need to end asylum hotels altogether.'
But by the end of the week, her own department quietly admitted they are diverting another £2.2billion of money earmarked for overseas development assistance cash for hotels this year.
Fury as hotel firm housing asylum seekers in 'all-inclusive resorts' paid £700M a year of YOUR money
That's basically the same amount as last year, despite shameless ministers sent out to insist on the airwaves that hotel use is falling and this Government has got a grip.
And the numbers blow away claims from politicians of all hues that we need a period of belt-tightening, with hard choices to be made.
Fair-minded voters — who believe in so-called sound money, restraint, spending within our means or whatever you want to call it — have every right to look upon this aghast.
And where the public might have had some sympathy over tough choices needing to be addressed, that argument is holed below the waterline by the seemingly endless magic money tree available for new arrivals to be housed while our veterans sleep on the streets.
The screeching U-turn on slashing Winter Fuel Payments is a case in point, after Labour MPs were hammered on the doorstep while campaigning in last month's local elections.
Voters who were sympathetic towards the two-child benefit cap a few years ago are now looking — through the prism of asylum hotels — at a state that is willing to pay such sums towards foreign arrivals, rather than on hungry British kids.
Billions to spend
And why can't we spend more on our defence sooner rather than later, when we clearly have billions to spend on this?
Which puts a deeply unpopular and struggling Government in something of a bind.
How can Rachel Reeves preach fiscal responsibility while chucking such vast amounts of cash out the door?
As the Chancellor's negotiations with Cabinet ministers ahead of Wednesday's Spending Review go to the wire, it's going to be a very hard sell that police and crime budgets need to be cut in the same department that is bleeding out cash on migrant hotels.
But the Home Office will see a reduction in their share of the pie, with Reeves playing hardball.
And while she will heavily play up this week that there will be no return to 'austerity', with some eye-catching investment announcements across the country in a bid to buy off angry voters eyeing up Reform, her fundamental problems have not changed.
The Chancellor has Labour MPs on one side demanding more cash in their areas, alongside furious Cabinet colleagues fighting cuts to their departments, while on the other side, the international bond markets, which keep the spending merry-go-around going, are looking at the numbers with deep suspicion.
Looking wobbly
Reeves' attempts to cut the benefits bill are being met with fierce opposition from Labour MPs, armed with this very argument: Why should disabled constituents see their support cut while billions are handed to young men who have come here after passing through numerous safe countries?
The self-proclaimed Iron Chancellor was looking wobbly already after a series of U-turns, but if she is agreeing to billions more for the NHS and our Armed Forces, cuts are going to have to come from somewhere . . . and soon.
Her allies insist there will be some iron on Wednesday, yet until the Government fixes the hotels mess, I'm not sure they will receive much sympathy or praise from a furious public that sees the current priorities as completely bonkers.
And heaven knows how high Reform's polling lead will be if the Chancellor decides tax hikes in the autumn to pay for this crazy spending are the right way forward.
THE row over trans people using women's loos rumbles on after the Supreme Court ruling of the bleedin' obvious: that there are only two sexes and women's spaces need protecting.
That argument can be found in depth elsewhere, but more and more public places are making all their toilets gender-neutral.
Without going full Alan Partridge, that is having a major side-effect . . . queues.
Unlike the ladies, I can't remember having to queue for the gents in a cafe, bar, club or theatre ever. Now it's endless.
WE have all sent an angry message then regretted it the next morning – well, I certainly have.
But fair cop to Reform's former chairman Zia Yusuf, who spectacularly stormed out of Nigel Farage's party on Thursday night after furious backroom bust-ups.
He's now back in a different role, having made up his differences behind the scenes.
Cue much social media mockery and crowing from Reform's online enemies that the rag-tag bunch of surging upstarts couldn't run a bath, let alone a country.
But I can't help thinking there's actually something quite grown up about throwing your hands up in the cold light of day and admitting you overcooked it and got it wrong.
I wonder if it might be more wishful thinking from Reform's panicking opponents that any of this will really change the price of fish.
It's hardly like either rival party – especially the Tories – have a leg to stand on when having a pop at others for squabbling.
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