As we wait for 0.34% of the UK electorate, mainly senior citizens and fellow travellers from the bowels of the Conservative Party, to decide who is the next Prime Minister, there is widespread cynicism from all quarters. Do we have any candidate who truly represents the views and values of the large majority of the UK? Boris Johnson's government only gained the vote of 29% of the electorate in 2019 and that was despite being against much-ridiculed Jeremy Corbyn, who on his Brexit views contrived to deter voters even from his own party. Since then the Tory party has transgressed a long way towards a dark right-wing ideology and, hopefully, obscurity.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have been playing to the gallery of English Nationalism. They have been vying to be the most committed to cutting taxes and attacking public services from the BBC and Channel 4 to the civil service and regulatory bodies. According to the Local Government Association, English Councils have already been emasculated, losing £16bn of core funding from central government in the decade from 2010 to 2020. The first round of the levelling up funding in 2020 allocated £2bn to councils across the UK. £1.7bn was set aside for a group of English councils, many of which failed to justify funding other than by having a Tory MP. Scotland was allocated,£170m, Wales £129m and Northern Ireland £49m. Again these are trivial sums compared to the significant reductions of central government funding and a freezing of Council Tax by the Scottish Government.
This suggests that levelling up has provided less than 11% of the core funding taken away from English Councils over the period since 2010. The removal of core funding has also disproportionately impacted councils with the most deprived populations. The very areas where levelling up is required. Despite both Truss and Sunak vowing that they believe in levelling up, there is no acknowledgement that it will require a lot more than on offer to safeguard public services. They have also failed to give any assurance that they will tackle climate change. On the contrary, new drilling for oil, fracking and a distaste for onshore wind turbines and solar farms is part of their pledge to secure votes from their film flam electorate.
Boris Johnson suspended 21 Conservative MPs who had voted for the EU Withdrawal Bill after he had attempted unsuccessfully to prorogue parliament in October 2019. Many were deselected from standing in the December 2019 general election. Only 3 were re-elected as MPs and none of these was included in his cabinet of wannabees. The experienced and principled 'One Nation' Tories were effectively expelled. There were some talented MPs who had served in the cabinet, politicians like David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Nicolas Soames, Alistair Burt, Oliver Letwin and even Philip Hammond had a greater commitment to fairness. Many of them have gone public in their despondency about the shift towards populism, deregulation, and latent nationalism. Rory Stewart has been very vocal about the rightward shift of the Tory Party and is scathing in his critique of Johnson and his cabinet of flunkeys in his excellent podcast with Alistair Campbell, The rest is politics,
Boris Johnson has bequeathed his successor a country on the cusp of meltdown as he holidays and attempts to big up his legacy by claiming he has 'got things done'. The bigger the damage, the bigger the lie. His final flourish as the energy crisis became a catastrophe for millions of households and tens of thousands of businesses was to go nuclear and announce a £20bn project for Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast. It will not be completed for 15 years, that's even longer than the 40 hospitals that were promised during the life of the present administration but are still languishing on the trolley in the corridors of power. We know that delivery was an alien concept during Johnson's time as PM, which explains why his true legacy is being the worst post-war Prime Minister. It will be a difficult act to follow but the two candidates are well equipped to challenge him.
Truss is a flippity gibbet, with an ego big enough to support several moons but seems to lack any principles, or if she does they are likely to be jettisoned as soon as some more popular scam is brought to her attention. The electorate considered Boris Johnson to be a likeable rogue and therefore he was given enough rope to hang himself. Truss appears to have no such endearing qualities other than her chameleon-like values. She has shown in the low-key hustings that she will bend her comments to keep those who have a vote satisfied. She has avoided any direct interviews with the media for fear of her flimsy policies being shredded and her wooden delivery mocked. Her infantile diplomatic skills are legendary and, even in the campaign, she has insulted President Macron and Nicola Sturgeon, two of the leaders she will have to work closely with if she is elected. Her bellicose utterings as the Foreign secretary have offended many nations and her tendency to speak before she thinks could have dire consequences for the country and her longevity as PM. I cannot see her getting past the first few months without the mood of the country, the ire of the media and her support in the Tory Party collapsing as opinion polls trace her plummeting popularity. Hopefully, her hasty removal from office by her party will force another General Election.
Sunak has the gravitas and the experience to perform the role of PM but is encumbered by his personal wealth and, possibly, some institutional racism amongst Tory Party members. He is instinctively a neo-liberal and would not be inclined to adopt interventionist policies to rescue the country from the cost of living crisis. His competence would appear to be less of an issue but the dire state of the cost of living crisis, the bickering in the Tory Party and world events allied with his ideology would make it highly unlikely that he could survive. He has the advantage of the backing of more MPs than Truss but they don't decide who gets to be the leader of the party. The timeworn party members do that. It is the cluster of English Nationalists, neoliberals, and the wealthy in search of tax advantages who have been vested with the responsibility of deciding who is next in line to be deposed.
