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, and the Conservative Party. All in one month!” My friend likes to drink Tusker in a subterranean pub called Kamutiini. If this is the view of the world in the depths of Kamutiini, God help Ms Truss. The best I can say for her is that if she turned up at Kamutiini, she would not leave thirsty.

I will probably have to write down the time of day each time I write these pieces because of the speed of events. But before things move on to the next phase in the dramatic life of the Twenty-First Century Tory Party, I need to try and make sense of where things are now.

The news hitting the airwaves yesterday evening was that the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, had chosen to resign because of a breach of the Ministerial Code. Her offence was to send sensitive documents to a friend from secret government systems while using her private email address. This perplexed me. In the light of what we have recently seen of aberrant ministerial behaviour, this was not to my mind a resignation affair. At most, I thought, Ms Braverman should have received a severe reprimand – including, perhaps, a warning letter – and told that the way she was conducting her affairs was not worthy of her position in government. Full stop. To my extreme surprise, the news was that Braverman was leaving the cabinet. I smelled a fish.

It seems to me that the right wing of the Tory Party has given up on Liz Truss. If that is correct, then she will not last very long in Downing Street. Every new occupant of the flat at the top of Number 10 is entitled to a few privileges once they take occupancy. Some choose to take the flat as they find it, depending on how long they see their occupancy lasting; others are bolder. Boris Johnson belongs in the latter category. When he was given the keys to the flat, he gave them to his young wife, a beautiful girl (twenty or more years younger than Johnson) and told her to enjoy herself and, blimey, she did!

Christ Almighty – Lynn Truss has resigned!! (13.36). More later. I need to think a lot…

Gitau

20 October 2022 (13.40)

The heading of this piece was appropriate. I knew Ms Truss’s time was about to reach its end, but I had no idea it would happen so quickly or so dramatically. I lived through the dramatic end of the demonic reign of Maggie Thatcher in 1990, but this was even more spectacular. Oh my goodness me!

Ashen-faced, unable to look at anybody or anything straight, she said she was going and walked back into Downing Street – no doubt to collapse in a flood of tears. She wasn’t even able to fulfil the usual requirements and travel half a mile to Buckingham Palace and inform the King first. Oh no - she was too upset. Lucky for her, the new monarch is a more relaxed chap than his mother was when she was in charge. To my surprise (having grown accustomed to the drama of helicopters following a convoy of cars to the Palace from Downing Street on similar occasions), King Charles was happy to accept her resignation by telephone (another first in British politics). One wonders whether Charles’s amenability was influenced by his opinion of the Prime Minister (remember, “Dear oh dear”). Perhaps it was a case of “if it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly”. Or perhaps the King just felt like the rest of us and was happy to see the back of Truss and couldn’t bear the sight of her.

Politics is not a game for the faint hearted. My City friends invented a new measure of time last week called a “Kwarteng” – meaning a short length of time in a high profile job (Example: “Weren’t you once at Goldman Sachs? “Yes, but only for a Kwarteng”). Well, perhaps we should now call it a “Truss”, or better still, a ”Kwarteng-Truss”.  Spare a thought for our dear friend Kwasi, as you digest this. Do you think he is crying into his pint of London Pride Ale?

I was about to explain that one of the privileges of being PM was redecorating Downing Street and Chequers (the vast country mansion the Prime Minister is entitled to enjoy while in office). This was a privilege exploited to the hilt by Boris Johnson’s young wife before he was ejected from power and replaced by Ms Truss. I don’t know whether Liz had ordered new carpets and curtains yet, but I am almost certain that they are still on the way.

What the devil did she think she was doing as Prime Minister? Appointing cartoon ethnic people like Suella Braverman, Kwasi Kwarteng and Kemi Badenoch to her cabinet was supposed to signal a departure from the traditional racist attitude of the Tories, but all it achieved was make her look ridiculous. These are people who are so right-wing, they deny their own ethnicity!

Spare a thought for Johnson too. The last I heard, he was receiving standing ovations each week after delivering humorous after-dinner speeches in America and being paid $150,000 dollars plus expenses each time. Is he crying?

Think about the poor, benighted Conservative Party. Why on earth did the Tories choose Truss to lead them? There was no heavy gun held to their heads, was there? That will forever be a mystery to me. My suspicion is that the fact her opponent in the contest was an Indian called Rishi Sunak (whose campaign message about what to fear was exactly what we got under Truss!) might have had something to do with it. But then you, dear reader, will accuse me of being racist…

What the United Kingdom needs now is a General Election, not more of this never-ending Tory farce. Labour would comfortably win…

I will be accused of being pro-Labour, but hey-ho…

What a day, what a week, what a year! Shouldn’t the Tory party disband itself and never darken these shores again with its ghastly presence?

Gitau

20 October 2022 (at a more civilised time)