This, of course, is palpable nonsense. Rishi Sunak had ample opportunity to demonstrate his concern for British households in the Spring Statement but the Chancellor dropped the ball spectacularly, choosing instead to protect the Treasury from rising inflation at the expense of ordinary families.
This, despite concerns that 1.3m people – including half a million children – will be pushed below the poverty line next year. Sunak was rightly branded “a fiscal illusionist” for announcing tax cuts that would not offset other previously announced plans.
Shapps has threatened P&O with legal action, as well as a review of all government contracts and dealings. He has also called for P&O’s arrogant chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite to quit.
The Prime Minister has even waded in, claiming that P&O could face “fines running into millions of pounds” but, as shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said: “The Government have still done absolutely nothing to hold P&O Ferries to account.”
The unfortunate reality, as ministers themselves have admitted, is that the Government may be powerless to act.
So, in the face of intense pressure and the impression that P&O has acted with impunity, Shapps has to give it a final desperate throw of the dice: the offer of “one further opportunity” to rehire all 800 workers on minimum wage, alongside a pledge to overhaul the laws on pay for seafarers.
Under his “pay up or ship out” ultimatum, if P&O does not comply, it will reportedly be banned from UK routes.
The public aren’t stupid enough to fall for that. They know that Shapps is playing to the gallery and they also know that this Government isn’t really fighting for the millions about to be hit by what Andrew Bailey has labelled a “historic shock to real incomes” that will be “worse than in any year in the 1970s”.
The Office for Budget Responsibility meanwhile has said that the country is facing the biggest fall in living standards in any single year since records began in 1956, with inflation on course to hit a 40-year high of 8.7pc in October.
