PARLIAMENT’S summer holiday finishes next week and Andy Burnham’s honeymoon could end with it.
Labour have gone ahead in the polls since he took over, but there’s a long list of problems piling up on his desk that could bring it all crashing down again.
Andy Burnham’s honeymoon could soon be over, as he faces a fresh immigration headache from backbenchers Credit: PA
If bleating lefties get their way, voters will quickly lose patience with Labour and back a party with a plan to get a grip of immigration Credit: AFP
And one of the biggest headaches is immigration, which has caused every other recent Prime Minister huge problems.
More than 100 Labour MPs are already demanding he drops Shabana Mahmood’s plans to make migrants wait for ten years before claiming benefits or applying for social housing.
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They must be mad. Opposing the Home Secretary might make them feel virtuous but, if anything, the rest of us think her changes don’t go far enough.
Instead of listening to his backbenchers, the PM should pay attention to former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who has urged Ms Mahmood to stick to her guns.
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The more she listens to out-of-touch MPs, “the worse it will be” because it is a “very big issue” for voters, he said.
“Pictures of people coming illegally into this country, people feel really, really strongly about it.
“Don’t listen to your Labour colleagues — press ahead,” he told her.
“When you’re doing something that really needs to be done, particularly on illegal immigration, you always get a kickback, and she’s got to carry on.”
More than 100 Labour MPs are already demanding he drops Shabana Mahmood’s plans to make migrants wait for ten years before claiming benefits or applying for social housing Credit: Getty
Instead of listening to his backbenchers, the PM should pay attention to former Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson, who has urged Ms Mahmood to stick to her guns on immigration Credit: Getty
And he warned that if they block her plans, voters will quickly lose patience and back a party with a plan to get a grip of immigration.
He said: “We need to have the right policies to address it, or someone else will. This is Shabana’s main argument — ‘If we don’t do it there’s a very, very different approach from a very different party and they’ll end up in government’.”
Wise words.
But if they don’t believe him, they should just remember what happened to the last Tory government.
The country lost confidence when they crashed the economy, but voters were absolutely furious when they broke their promise to stop the small boats — let alone allowing 3.5million people to come here legally in just four years.
That changed our country for good and is one of the biggest reasons the Tories are still struggling to get a hearing.
With numbers like that, it’s impossible to know who was allowed in, what they believe or how they’ll behave.
The result is the shocking news that the Government has had to start handing out leaflets telling migrants not to rape women, that sex with children is illegal and domestic violence is a crime.
And it’s why the Home Secretary knows she’s got to press ahead and sort the system out — no matter how much her backbenchers complain.
Her changes so far have seen the number of criminals and immigration offenders booted out hitting its highest level for a decade.
Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, knows we can’t carry on like this and he’s appalled that a million young people are out of work, not at college or in training Credit: Getty
Labour MPs face the Jobcentre after the next election unless they back the Government’s welfare and immigration cuts Credit: EPA
More than 80,000 foreign criminals, immigration offenders and failed asylum seekers have been deported since the election, but just 6,000 of them had arrived on the small boats, which is why she now wants to strike deals to send those refused asylum to other countries.
That obviously makes sense, but we also need stronger rules to keep out those who don’t share our values — let alone people who support terrorism and extremism, racist bigots or anyone who believes women are second-class citizens.
Labour MPs need to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to welfare too.
Anyone who looks at the numbers can see the country is going broke and we need to cut the cost of benefits if we’re going to avoid a terrible reckoning.
The economy is barely growing, rising energy bills have increased inflation, unemployment is increasing, too, and the benefits bill drove up government borrowing by £1.8billion last month.
Taxes are sky high and we’re mortgaged to the hilt with national debt approaching a whopping £3trillion.
Lenders have such little confidence in our ability to pay our way that our borrowing costs are the highest of any major economy.
That means we’re wasting well over £100billion on interest payments alone — almost as much as we spend on education.
In fact, we’re spending billions more on benefits than on education, defence and policing put together.
Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, knows we can’t carry on like this and he’s appalled that a million young people are out of work, not at college and don’t have a training place.
That will ruin their lives, cost the rest of us a fortune and he’s determined to do something about it by getting them off the dole, on to apprenticeships and into work.
Labour lefties bleat when anyone tries to curb the benefits bill or dares to tackle immigration, but Burnham reappointed Mahmood and McFadden and must back them now.
Labour MPs need to get behind them too, or they’ll be off to the Jobcentre as well after the next election.
