Jeremy Corbyn defied his critics by coming across well during last night’s debate and Labour is continuing to enjoy a revival in the polls. But the Labour leader is still facing a tough time in the press:
Take a look in the small print of Labour’s plan for government, says the Daily Mail, and there’s a nasty shock waiting for you. The ‘Land Value Tax’ – which has been ‘highly praised by Jeremy Corbyn’ could ‘add more than £2,500 to the annual council tax bill’, according to the Tories. And it’s clear, says the Mail, that LVT would hit those with gardens the hardest. More worryingly though, the proposal ‘would inevitably cause widespread hardship to help fund a massive expansion of the State’. Don’t be fooled, says the Mail: this stuff is ‘straight out of a Marxist textbook’. But should we be surprised? After all, ‘what can we expect of a leader who has embraced every hard-Left cause for 50 years?’. The Mail concludes its leader with a ‘chilling thought’: ‘ten days from now, this rabble could be running – and ruining – Britain’.
Meanwhile, the other newspapers turn their targets on Angela Merkel after the German leader suggested over the weekend that Europe could no longer rely on its allies in the wake of Trump’s election and Brexit. Here’s what the papers have to say:
Angela Merkel’s comments about the future of Nato are ‘laughable’ says the Sun. The paper points out that Europe has been heavily reliant upon the organisation for its safety since 1945. But you wouldn’t know that from the comments coming from the German government; ‘last month the German foreign minister shamefully described the two per cent defence target for Nato members as “completely unrealistic”,’ says the Sun. ‘Is it any wonder Donald Trump seems unsure about upholding America’s international commitments,’ the paper asks. Britain, for its part, is making the right noises about Nato’s future. But this just makes Merkel’s ‘anti-UK rhetoric’ even more surprising and is ‘deeply unhelpful ‘. It also shows the importance of maintaining the special relationship with the US. It’s time for Merkel to ‘stop electioneering’ and remember the UK – and the US’s – vital role in keeping the continent safe, concludes the Sun.
‘Angela Merkel is the unacknowledged leader of Europe,’ says the Times. But despite her wealth of experience and her ‘canny political instincts’, her comments about the US and Britain were ‘wrong, misguided and dangerously inflammatory’. It doesn’t take much to work out that Merkel’s relations with Trump aren’t easy – and the President’s remarks ‘that Germany was “bad, very bad” for selling too many cars to America’ won’t have helped matters. Yet ‘Mrs Merkel is in danger of turning a spat into a dangerous rift’, says the Times. By suggesting the days of the US being a ‘reliable ally’ are numbered, Merkel is also ‘exacerbating what may be a temporary divergence’. The German Chancellor also seems to be ignoring something on which Trump does have a point: ‘that Europe is not pulling its weight in paying for Nato’. ‘There is a further flaw in Mrs Merkel’s remarks,’ says the Times: in criticising Britain, Merkel appears to be suggesting that the UK is seeking to turn its back on Nato. This ignores the many reassurances Theresa May has offered to Europe on maintaining defence co-operation after Brexit, points out the Times. Merkel should be careful that her comments don’t provoke ‘the very backlash in British public opinion that does indeed begin to regard its continental Nato allies with fading enthusiasm,’ argues the Times.
The Guardian disagrees: Merkel’s remarks might be ‘unsurprising’, the paper argues, suggesting that it is becoming increasingly obvious that Trump cannot be trusted. But even if the German Chancellor’s words don’t mark ‘a significant development’, they still ‘illuminate a significant change’. After all, suggesting that Europe could no longer rely on the US ’would not have been commonsensical five years ago’. But how the times have changed. ‘Trump shows no sign of acknowledging the existence of a world in which bullying and bluster won’t get him what he wants,’ the Guardian claims. The ‘slapdash aggression’ he shows on the domestic stage back in the US does not bode well either for his style of presidency and the ‘failure of the US to live up to the illusions of those who loved it’ is ‘a threat to the security and prosperity of both Europe and America’, the paper argues. Merkel is talking ‘ominous common sense,’ the Guardian suggests.
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