A tweet I posted last week has been flagged Liz Truss‘s choice of £4.50 earrings and Rishi Sunak‘s decision to wear £450 Prada shoes to visit a Teesside construction site, while also donning a £3,500 suit for a leadership debate. It caused a bit of a storm to say the least, quickly garnering over ten million views.
My comments were widely interpreted as anti-aspirational and it was suggested that I wanted revenge on the man who, while Chancellor, had been planning a coup for a long time and had stabbed it ruthlessly and metaphorically. Boris Johnson in the back.
Nadine Dorrie’s tweet about the hopeful appearances of the conservative party leadership last week quickly gained more than ten million views
Rishi plotted against the most electorally successful Prime Minister the Conservative Party has known since the days of Margaret Thatcher. Through his actions, Michael Gove’s betrayal of Boris Johnson during the 2016 leadership campaign appeared as an amateur rehearsing for the role of Brutus in a play at a village hall.
Those interpretations of my tweet were wrong. For I know all too well the value of aspiration in life. I would never want to suppress anyone’s desire to improve their lot. In fact, my entire time as Secretary of State at the Ministry of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was aimed at encouraging such values.
We have transferred money from London to socially disadvantaged regions in an effort to reach people from backgrounds who have never considered a career in the creative or sporting sector. In doing so, we have lived and breathed the policy of leveling.
Conservative leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak visits Teesside Freeport construction site
Rishi Sunak wore £450 Prada shoes to visit a Teesside construction site, he also wore a £3,500 suit for a leadership debate
No, my Twitter comment went much deeper.
I wanted to highlight Rishi’s misguided sartorial style to warn Tory members not to get carried away by appearances as happened to many of us who served in the Chancellor’s Cabinet. The killer’s gleaming smile, his soft voice, and even his small stature had fooled many of us.
I want to emphasize that it is not that I believe that a rich man or woman – even if their father-in-law is one of the richest men on an entire continent – cannot be prime minister of this great country. But they must have common sense, understand the lives of others, have empathy, compassion and know how to fill a car with gasoline and pay at the till.
Rishi’s father was a general practitioner, his mother a pharmacist. He went to a public school where the annual cost is about £36,000. They were in the highest income bracket of two per cent of all earners in the UK. Describing his background as humble is yet another indication of poor judgment.
Rishi will never know what it’s like to feel scared, broke and hopeless, without a safety net from rich parents. He’s never had to lie awake at night, worrying about paying the bills. A bailiff will never knock on his door.
The fact is that I criticized Rishi’s complete lack of self-consciousness for wearing such expensive clothes while visiting one of the most socially disadvantaged towns in the North of England.
That said, there is a part of me that feels sorry for Rishi.
He was enthusiastically supported—and I must say, most likely fully absorbed—by Dominic Cummings and a special adviser (who incidentally co-founded a sex-party agency) who cut a shadowy figure walking down the halls of Downing Street. Rishi has walked a path of betrayal and is unlikely to win the hearts and minds of Conservative Party members, who value loyalty and decency above all else.
The coup that removed Boris Johnson was long planned, Tudoresque in its degree of brutality and worthy of a chapter in a Hilary Mantel novel.
It was always the case that the prime minister’s enemies tried to remove him before the summer’s parliamentary recess. The plan was to hold a leadership election during the long hiatus and present a new leader at the annual conference in October.
Had it not been caused by the debacle over Chris Pincher – who resigned as deputy head whip after he was accused of groping two men in a private club – Boris’ enemies would have created another reason. In their desire to replace Boris, they would always override the choice of the members, the democratic vote of the voters, an 80-seat majority and endanger our stability.
Liz knows how to budget. She also knows that for the UK economy to work properly, people need money to spend, which in turn increases tax revenues for the Treasury.
My own suspicions as to what was behind Rishi’s painted smile arose some time ago when I had to appeal to him as chancellor regarding the review of the BBC license fee. This was a policy I championed during my time as Secretary of State. It was a policy enthusiastically supported by the Prime Minister and the vast majority of Conservative MPs.
However, Rishi and the Treasury refused to sign the assessment and blocked it for many months. It meant we would be stuck with the ever increasing and outdated BBC license fee forever.
I appealed to Rishi, but he refused to give in. I spoke to him again just after the cabinet on the morning of the day he launched his coup. He gave me that smile and said something that meant nothing. I was obliged to write to the Prime Minister requesting that he intervene – not knowing there was no time left as Boris would be forced to resign.
Imagine my utter surprise when one of Rishi’s first policy announcements as a candidate for leader was a review of the BBC license fee! A policy that he did not want to concern himself with before. Likewise, Rishi says he wants to cut VAT on the utility bill. However, Boris had been pleading with him for two years to introduce this measure, as the prime minister was convinced that such a cut could bring immediate relief to families.
In a speech on Thursday, Boris commented with a touch of unusual sarcasm, “Apparently it was easier than we thought!”
Rishi was the classic dog in the manger as chancellor. Whenever Boris visited him to discuss serious matters, Rishi was always polite, but obnoxious. Never a team player.
Rishi will never know what it’s like to feel scared, broke and hopeless, without a safety net from rich parents
Okay, I may have gone a bit over the top comparing Liz Truss’ £4.50 earrings to Rishi’s £3,500 suit. But I had been genuinely surprised when Liz told me a few months ago that she bought them at Claire’s and how much they cost. Liz knows how to budget. She also knows that for the UK economy to work properly, people need money to spend, which in turn increases tax revenues for the Treasury.
The truth is, you can’t put money in people’s pockets if you keep taxes at the highest level they’ve been in 70 years – as Rishi suggested. Inflation may be a global problem, but the way to tackle it is not to raise corporate taxes on companies run by people who innovate and invest and create wealth and jobs.
No, it wasn’t my comment that attacked aspiration. Anti-aspiration continues in the policy of a man who lacks economic creativity and wants to keep taxes high.
Members of the Conservative Party are pragmatic people. They form a bulwark between career self-interest, unadulterated spin and common sense.
This weekend they will receive ballot papers to choose a new leader. The only candidate who can even take the baton from Boris, who embodies empathy, kindness, integrity and loyalty—values essential in one who aspires to lead a great nation—is Liz Truss.
I trust our party members, and we should all trust their answer, because they are never wrong.