DAILY MAIL COMMENT: No half measures on arming Kyiv, PM

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: No half measures on arming Kyiv, PM

It was little surprise Volodymyr Zelensky opted to start his tour of Europe in Britain.

He wanted to say thank you for our leading role in providing military, financial and political support to Ukraine against the Russian invaders.

Unshackled from the EU, we could act with decisive speed, rather than become mired in interminable and unseemly haggling.

Truly, if the Ukrainian president’s visit is the UK being isolated on the world stage after Brexit, as embittered Remainers claim we are, we can live with it.

Yesterday, Mr Zelensky took his campaign to persuade the West to give his troops warplanes to Paris and Brussels.

Volodymyr Zelensky took his campaign to persuade the West to give his troops warplanes to Paris and Brussels

While the RAF’s Typhoons may not be the answer, Rishi Sunak has urged our Nato allies to supply more suitable fighter jets to help Ukraine defeat Vladimir Putin.

This, of course, has caused palpitations among some EU nations that have already had to be dragged kicking and screaming to donate military hardware.

Too many are trying to strike a balance between handing Kyiv enough weaponry for self-defence – but not so much that Putin will escalate the conflict.

That, though, risks condemning Ukraine’s heroic fighters to an unwinnable war of attrition. Eventually they’d succumb to the sheer number of Russia’s barbarians.

A war simply can’t be half-fought. And this isn’t just any war, but a symbolic clash between authoritarian evil and the values of freedom and democracy.

The consequences of the West losing its bottle would be catastrophic. To paraphrase Churchill, we must give Ukraine all the tools it needs to finish the job.

Tax gamble is failing

Whacking up corporation tax from 19 to 25 per cent was always a colossal gamble.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was warned that hammering businesses from April would crush growth and drive investment, jobs and skilled high-fliers to lower-tax rivals.

But he hasn’t listened. And now the chickens are rapidly coming home to roost.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt was warned that hammering businesses from April would crush growth and drive investment, jobs and skilled high-fliers to lower-tax rivals

AstraZeneca, which supplied Covid vaccines at cost, has decided to build a multi-million-pound manufacturing plant in Ireland, not Britain, because of our savage corporation tax rate.

With the economy teetering, the last thing Britain needs is punitive taxes that hobble the very firms that will spearhead our revival. Mr Hunt must use next month’s Budget to spike this absurd hike.

Labour is traditionally the party that shackles the economy. For a Tory chancellor to do the same is unforgiveable.

Points of view

The so-called liberal Left, led by the BBC, is outraged because Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson says he supports the death penalty for the most heinous crimes.

The fact is, capital punishment argument was won by the abolitionists decades ago. But however much the chattering classes clutch their pearls, this Red Wall ex-miner’s views are hardly outlandish.

A survey last month found one in three people wants the death penalty reintroduced. Of course, not everyone agrees with the MP. But we live in a country with free speech.

The so-called liberal Left, led by the BBC, is outraged because Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson says he supports the death penalty for the most heinous crimes

No one should be disdained for holding an opinion – even if it doesn’t match those of the sneering metropolitan bien pensants.

• Labour tries to paint the Tories as the party of sleaze and incompetence, but those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Ex-Labour MP Jared O’Hara, who fiddled his parliamentary expenses to buy cocaine, was jailed for four years (twice as long as he served his constituents). And while London mayor Sadiq Khan spends his time virtue-signalling, knife killings in the capital have reached terrifying levels. Labour is less a serious government in waiting, than a disaster waiting to happen.

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