BRITAIN must start spending again if it is to bounce back. That is Rishi Sunak’s clear message to the nation today.

The Chancellor’s bailouts during the lockdown have preserved millions of jobs and kept the economy afloat.

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But he knows the money tap can’t be left running for long.

The public must now bolster the country’s coffers by hitting the high street tomorrow when thousands of shops reopen. We can still take sensible precautions but, as Rishi says today, we must overcome our fears of Covid-19 and get the show on the road again.

It is heartening to see his support for traditional stores when so much has shifted on to the internet.

But the size of his task in getting Brits to wake up to the grim economic reality is daunting.

As a new poll shows, 67 per cent of workers think they will be unaffected by the Covid slump.

The brutal reality is that at least three million jobs could be lost as Britain faces its biggest ever peacetime slump. Even state-funded institutions such as the NHS are not immune if the country runs out of money.

Boris Johnson is likely to announce this week that the over-zealous two-metre social-distancing rule is to be scrapped.

This will go a long way towards kickstarting the revival of pubs and restaurants and letting schools reopen fully.

But people must be shaken out of their dangerous complacency about the crisis ahead.

So let’s heed the Chancellor’s clarion call and get the tills ringing once more.

Grenfell compo insult

THREE years on from the Grenfell Tower fire, survivors are still waiting for justice.

To add insult to injury, families are being offered compensation of as little as £10,000 for the loss of their loved ones.It is already a national disgrace that no one has yet been held to account for the deadly inferno that took 72 lives.

The official inquiry, suspended during the pandemic, must make rapid progress when it reconvenes. But these derisory compensation offers are a scandal.

Such paltry sums cannot begin to make up for the loss and agony endured by relatives.

Jackpot not pot luck?

BOFFINS have uncovered a sensational statistic — 27 is the most frequently drawn number in the UK’s lotteries.

It has been picked 399 times in 3,071 draws in the UK National Lottery, Thunderball, EuroMillions and the Irish Lotto.

It’s a no-brainer to pick 27 . . . the trouble is, what are the others?

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