Andy Richardson: 'Challenges mount as autumn begins'
And now it gets difficult. The challenges are mounting for the Government as summer ends and autumn begins.
Our schools should soon be full, our universities brimming. Workers are being encouraged back to the office and public transport will gradually return to pre-Covid levels. Rishi Sunak would like to impose tax rises to recoup the colossal cost of Covid-19. He has been warned, however, that doing so might scupper any recovery.
Like newly-weds paying for the wedding, buying a house and settling the debt on the honeymoon, we face the age-old conundrum of having more to pay for than we can afford.
Plans to raise capital gains tax and corporation tax have gone down as well as a Donald Trump speech at a Black Lives Matter rally – particularly in light of Boris’s bungling and the Government’s U-turns.
Their lead in the polls is gone and on top of the calamaties facing us, we have Brexit to contend with in the coming months. Is there a deal in sight? In the interminable game of brinksmanship, the negotiations will go to the wire, with more uncertainty and chaos for business.
Did anyone really buy into the lie about £350 million a week for the NHS?
The return of universities will be challenging. Students need to get back to the classroom. But while chancellors proudly describe efforts to maintain social distancing, the prospects of that outside the classroom are as high as a snowstorm in the Sahara.
Students will do what students have done since time immemorial, mixing as readily as gin and tonic.
Hospitality, the UK’s third largest sector, faces renewed difficulty. The Eat Out To Help Out scheme helped get the industry back on its feet but the removal of that saving will bring problems as we head into leaner autumn months.
With furlough ending and incentives for diners off the table we’re heading for a diet of job losses. The 1.8 million sector employees won’t all have jobs come Christmas. Theatres, nightclubs and concert halls, meanwhile, are in meltdown.
There’s been a rush of applicants for the Covidiot Of The Year title as ravers and holidaymakers returning from Greece duke it out for the prize.
Lest we forget, we remain in the middle of a pandemic, without a vaccine, where the R rate is rising.
