AFTER those dizzying U-turns, Liz Truss has transformed into a Rishi Sunak tribute act.
Why do the Tories do you just go for the real thing? It would have saved everyone a lot of suffering.
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And perhaps in these turbulent times.
Altar might smile from the doorstep of 10 Downing Street towards the end of the week, or the end of the day, or the end of this sentence.
Another unelected Prime Minister of the Tory! How much will we have, you wonder, before the sheepish Tories finally face an enraged nation?
But this chaos must not continue.
For all her good intentions, for all her bold dreams, for all her boasting about giving The Blob a big kick, six weeks of Liz Truss has caused nothing but chaos and misery.
She started a fire that she couldn’t control right away. And now she’s completely destroyed every cause she’s ever associated.
Lower taxes, a smaller state, a happy sun-kissed country where growth brought prosperity to all—there was nothing wrong with the ideas.
But their ham-fist treatment gave the market the fumes and had the pounds crumbling.
Liz Truss thought she could go for growth without appeasing the market, and without the support of the Office of Budget Responsibility, part of the UK Treasury, and the likes of the IMF, the bank of England and slick city boys who were always ready to make a quick buck from other people’s economic woes.
hopelessly messed up
Truss thought she could do it all without one of them.
She was spectacularly, hopelessly wrong.
Who will dare to cut taxes from the highest point in 70 years?
The top rate of 45 percent — a hateful goodbye to Brownanother useless prime minister never elected by the British people – now stands for a generation in sacred stone.
High taxes will be the norm for everyone. The cult of growth, growth, growth has been hopelessly screwed up and will usher in a new era of desperate balancing between the books.
Everything Truss campaigned for has been dumped.
Government spending cuts are now continuing. The corporate tax rate – making the UK a less attractive place for investors – is now being raised from 19 percent to 25 percent.
Don’t talk about it U-turns – that doesn’t quite cover it.
In just six weeks, Truss has completely repented of every policy that got her elected.
The Remainer who became a Leaver is now revealed as a cocker-upper of extraordinary proportions.
Brexit? You can forget about Brexit. Truss, the last major proponent of a Brexit worthy of the name, has ramped that up as well.
She couldn’t organize an ap**s up at a brewery, let alone a successful exit from the European Union.
If this is where Brexit took us, then it just wasn’t worth all the pain – and that fact could still cause rifts within the Conservative Party tearing it apart forever.
The only person who did well out of Brexit is Boris Johnsonwho goes out to dinner with it for the rest of his days.
Bojo is the only one standing on the sun-kissed highlands of our post-Brexit Britain.
Apart from him we will all be poorer for the descent that has led us from Cameron until Be able to to Johnson to Truss.
What a mess. What a disaster. Hapless Truss promised growth, but its economic problems have only left us poorer.
And if the Tories are no longer the party of stability and economic competence, what exactly are they for?
On Friday afternoon, Truss stopped her chancellor Quasi Quarteng in the trash of history.
Yet there is no suggestion that Kwarteng has ever attempted to introduce rogue states that will cause the new prime minister to cling to her pearls of horror.
Kwasi was only trying to implement the policies Truss had promised during that endless Tory leadership campaign.
You know what it says about the Truss can: lower taxes (currently at a high of 70 years), a smaller state (which expanded to face the ravages of the Covid pandemic), and high growth.
A more traditional Tory government. That’s what Liz wants. That’s what Kwarteng wanted.
So why does only one of them have the boot? If Kwarteng had his financial calculations hopelessly wrong, then Liz Truss must have used the Diane Abbott pocket calculator?
Why has Kwasi lost his performance while Truss remains prime minister? Beat me! I watched her speech in Downing Street. I saw her lips move. And it still doesn’t make sense for Kwasi to go and Truss to stay.
And if Liz repents of her daring plans and regrets all her yak-yak-yak about growth—which clever old Rishi Sunak predicted would bring misery and chaos—what’s the point?
But the Conservative Party’s existential dilemma is not Liz Truss.
The terminal Tory problem is that the British people gave Boris Johnson a massive 80-seat majority. And Tory MPs decided to give BoJo the boot.
Liz Truss has only been on the job for 40 days and Tory MPs are already planning to dump her. And maybe they will. Maybe they should. According to a poll, Liz has the same popularity level as Prince Andrew.
The Tories are now the company of headless chickens. This feels almost at the end. Liz Truss is in her bunker, moving around armies that no longer exist, and the enemy stands at the gates of the city.
Do they really expect us to meekly accept the fifth Tory Prime Minister in just six years? And another unelected prime minister? Gordon Brown in blue? What total disregard for the British people.
The idea that the Tories can keep changing leaders and not ask for a mandate from the British people is insane.
After all the torments the Tories endured to anoint Truss, the blue flock of Tory MPs already wants to replace her with a “dream ticket” – Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt. This month’s Tory leaders!
But then there must be general elections. How can there not be? These tired, crabby Tories have been in power for so long that they’ve forgotten that we live in a democracy.
How decadent they seem. How totally corrupted by all those years in office. How complacent and contemptuous and spoiled. How completely ripe to kick out.
The Tories are a party that is currently eating itself. All those pathetic little factions of Remainers and Leavers, pro-Boris and anti-Boris, Red Wall and Blue Wall.
I’ve always thought that a bad Tory government would always be better than a good Labor government. Now I’m honestly not so sure.
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Strangely enough, Kwasi’s dismissal feels like a human sacrifice. Mean. Cruel. And in the end absolutely mindless. Because Kwasi was only trying to do what Liz Truss wanted to do – what she supposedly believes in.
Now the chancellor’s job goes to a reassuring figure from an economically more cautious wing of the party – Jeremy Hunt.
Jeremy is of course a Remainer. But you know what? Our country has sunk so low that I’m not sure if that phase means anything more. Jeremy Hunt looks healthy and capable.
That might be the best we can hope for right now.
All of Liz’s bold promises of low taxes and high growth are discarded as she tries to save her own skin. It’s all quite pathetic.
If you love our country, and I know you do, please go TODAY, Prime Minister. Britain deserves better.