MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: By accident or not, the Chancellor has become a modern-day Scrooge
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Nobody except Ebenezer Scrooge openly scorns charity at Christmas. Readers of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol will recall the frozen-hearted miser’s riposte to a request to subscribe to good causes at the festive season. The charity’s emissary tells him that ‘a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices.’.
![[Michael Caine as Ebenezer Scrooge in the 1992 film The Muppet Christmas Carol]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/22/01/93393745-0-image-a-111_1734830295010.jpg)
He then asks: ‘What shall I put you down for?’. Scrooge snarls: ‘Nothing!’. Well, nobody would behave like that now, even if they wanted to. Dickens so changed the hearts of men by his writing that even the meanest know that they ought at least to look as if they care, especially at this time of year.
A 21st century Scrooge would probably hire spin doctors to publicise his giving. But Sir Keir Starmer’s new Government has, in a matter of ill-starred months, blundered into what looks like an unintentional imitation of the notorious old skinflint. Can they really have meant to make such a mess? Do the Prime Minister and his Chancellor, when they are safely in private, shout at each other about the error of withdrawing the winter fuel allowance from so many pensioners?.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves presenting her Budget in October. The Government has blundered into what looks like an unintentional imitation of Dickens' miser Scrooge. Have they also begun to concede, among themselves, that it is increasingly likely that they got their sums wrong about just how many small farmers would be badly affected by their inheritance tax grab?.
