On Wednesday Liz Truss said she was “a fighter not a quitter”. On Thursday, after yet another day of Conservative chaos, she stopped fighting and quit.
It was a fitting end. One last screeching U-turn in a premiership that was one long U-turn from her infamous “mini-Budget”.
She was the shortest serving, and almost certainly the worst, Prime Minister in British history.
But, although she lasted less time than a lettuce, we will be living with the consequences of her disastrous time in office for much longer.
She may have been unceremoniously jettisoned but we can’t just go back to the time before her and pretend it never happened.
She caused interest rates to soar and they won’t return to previous levels any time soon. Bank of England data shows that homeowners coming off two-year fixed-term mortgages in October 2022 are set to pay £500 a month more on average. It is estimated that, in Ipswich alone, this could affect around 5,000 households next year.
This is on top of soaring energy and food prices. How do the Conservatives expect people to manage?
The “mini-Budget” was supposed to turbocharge growth and generate increased income to improve public services. Instead, we are now teetering on the brink of recession and the NHS, schools, defence, police, courts, transport and councils are all facing spending cuts.
Despite this the Conservative Party is still insisting that it should decide our next Prime Minister.
The drunks who crashed the car have snatched the keys back and are driving off again.
None of them can be trusted to act in the best interest of the country.
Local Conservative Party members voted for Liz Truss to be Prime Minister – many of them currently sitting as councillors. The next time someone from the Conservatives knocks on your door ask them if they voted for Liz Truss.
If they say “yes” then you know you can’t trust their judgement on anything. If they say “no” then they probably did but are just too embarrassed to admit it.
Conservative MPs are trying to blame the party members for electing Liz Truss, but they are the ones who allowed her name to go forward to the final ballot. They know her best and knew what she was like. Their job was to put two sensible candidates forward for the members to choose from. They failed epically and their judgement is just as catastrophic as the members’.
Any MP who accepted a place in Liz Truss’s cabinet – whether it was because they genuinely believed in her or, because of personal ambition, were prepared to turn a blind eye to her manifest failings – shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power ever again.
Even when it became clear how disastrous Liz Truss was, most Conservative MPs thought of themselves and not the country, keeping quiet rather than speaking out. Look at the columns our local MPs have written over the last month. There was barely a single mention of the chaos engulfing the country, let alone any criticism of the Prime Minister.
The fact that some Conservative MPs are even now considering re-installing Boris Johnson as Prime Minister shows that the Conservatives have given up on being a serious party of government.
His government ended in chaos with over 50 ministerial resignations. It was mired in sleaze, incompetence, and corruption. He is still under investigation for lying to Parliament and could be kicked out of the House of Commons before the end of the year.
You might be able to fool the Conservatives, but you can’t fool the markets.
The pound strengthened and Government borrowing costs fell following Liz Truss’s resignation. When a return by Boris Johnson became a possibility that went into reverse. A Boris Johnson Government would mean even higher mortgage rates and even deeper spending cuts.
The antics of the Conservatives have made the UK a laughingstock around the world. They are a now joke party – but the joke’s on us and it is an expensive one.
We cannot go on like this.
The Conservatives cannot be trusted to run our country or to choose our next Prime Minister.
It’s time for a change.
We need a General Election now.