Gitau's Politics

TORIES AGAINST TRUSS Things are moving along at such astonishing speed that I must remind myself that it is only six weeks since we saw another Tory leader standing outside 10 Downing Street and telling us how they would change the world. Liz Truss, Prime Minister since 6 September 2022 will very shortly – perhaps as soon as I finish typing this piece – be handing over power to a new leader of the Conservative Party. That leader will be the fourth Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in as many years. How did things become so unstable? We used to laugh at the Italians for the frequency of their changes of government. Is anybody laughing now? In the space of less than two months Liz Truss has achieved greatness few Prime Ministers before her could imagine. My friend from King’eero sent me a photo of Ms Truss accompanied by this: “Liz Truss, the UK Prime Minister. She will be gone soon! Her legacy is already very impressive. She buried the Queen, the Pound, the Country, the Chancellor, a...

TORIES AGAINST TRUSS Things are moving along at such astonishing speed that I must remind myself that it is only six weeks since we saw another Tory leader standing outside 10 Downing Street and telling us how they would change the world. Liz Truss, Prime Minister since 6 September 2022 will very shortly – perhaps as soon as I finish typing this piece – be handing over power to a new leader of the Conservative Party. That leader will be the fourth Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in as many years. How did things become so unstable? We used to laugh at the Italians for the frequency of their changes of government. Is anybody laughing now? In the space of less than two months Liz Truss has achieved greatness few Prime Ministers before her could imagine. My friend from King’eero sent me a photo of Ms truss accompanied by this: “Liz Truss, the UK Prime Minister. She will be gone soon! Her legacy is already very impressive. She buried the Queen, the Pound, the Country, the Chancellor, a...

GREATER LOVE HAS NO MAN THAN KWASI “Dear oh dear.” These were the first words the new British monarch, Charles III, used as he welcomed the Prime Minister into his office on Wednesday evening for their weekly meeting. The words were muttered, almost to himself. It was as though Charles was preparing himself for an awkward time ahead. It seemed that he was asking himself “WTF am I supposed to say to this cloth-eared Tory!” In all seriousness, though, I think what Charles had in mind was his role as constitutional monarch and whether he could find a way, within the constraints of his authority, to influence the Prime Minister in her execution of government policy. Better still, was it possible to find a formulation of words which could assist this poor lady and save her from herself? How can you rescue a person from a wilful, ceaseless desire to wound themselves irrevocably? In a famous book from 1867 called The English Constitution, Walter Bagehot wrote that the British monarch has thre...

It really was something, wasn’t it? A party enjoying the arrival of a new Prime Minister after twelve years of unchallenged governmental dominance was tearing itself apart. Cabinet ministers abandoning collective responsibility willy-nilly and leaping at the throats of cabinet colleagues; Tory MPs who had never known any colour of government other than blue demanding a general election for a “fresh mandate”; former ministers sneering at the competence of their successors. Quite a debacle! So, where does this leave us electorally? Let us not go too far back into political history for a useful yardstick to use in determining the likely result of the next UK general election. Come what may, the constitution requires that a general election must be held no later than five years after the date of the last general election. Five years since the date of Boris Johnson’s sensational electoral triumph in December 2019 gives you December 2024 as the last date by which an election must be held. Jo...