No.263 - The First Cracks Appear!

Dear James,

One month ago, Rishi Sunak, our new PM, kidded himself that he could create a cabinet containing all the flavours of your divided party. He would be the great smoother over of all dissent, the calmer of the torrid seas of your divided party and the reasonable guarantor of that elusive condition called Tory Party unity. Suella Braverman, she who ‘dreamed of refugees on a plane to Rwanda’, was included. As was Steve Baker an extreme Brexiteer who substituted for “Monocle-Mogg’. Sunak even took on the notorious Sir Gavin Williamson - that serial baby-faced, failure from previous regimes and keeper of Cronus the giant tarantula kept on his desk to intimidate all comers - but he lasted just a few days after being found guilty of bullying. Otherwise they were all there, beaming solidarity and post-Trussian peace. Fronted by Sunakian charm and the calm and balm exterior of Jeremy Hunt, we were told that at last we were in ‘safe hands’.

It couldn’t last. This weekend rumours erupted that Mr Sunak and the Chancellor had put out feelers for a ‘Swiss style’ entry into the EU Single Market. The ERG were enraged. Shouts of ‘betrayal littered the front pages of the Tory Press. Denials flowed from Downing Street and Nigel Farage threatened to re-enter politics should such traitorous behaviour be proven correct. The Tory Party is as divided as ever and messers Sunak and Hunt are merely the latest versions of the doomed role of keepers of the peace.

James, twelve years of Tory misrule and the same tired faces are still there, reshuffled for the umpteenth time and missing only one or two who have fallen by the wayside. Rees-Mogg is recently departed but Breverman, Barclay, Dowden and Raab are still staring out at us with those bewildered, hang dog looks of those who’ve seen their crazed dreams battered, distorted but still hanging by a thread.

And, of course these are only the ‘poor, bloody infantry’ - those Ministers whose impossible job it is to make the most of the mirage of ‘Brexit Opportunities’. No wonder they look so glum and lost for ideas! Poor old Steve Barclay, recycled yet again, this time as Health Secretary, has to face the fact that NHS waiting times (people waiting for more than 12 hours for a bed) have soared since 2020 from fewer than 5,000 to 45,000 today. Another example of Tory misrule.   

Barclay and his band of ‘retreads’ look for inspiration from their leaders and find none. In the last twelve years we’ve had five Prime Ministers, three of them coming this year. It’s as if the Tory machine is grinding on, spewing out the same old people in different guises and different shades of scarcely concealed despair. There are no ideas, there’s no plan, just the same old rehashed formulae of low taxes, small government and little England patriotism allowing Tories to sneer, jeer and cheer according to their ancient tribal rituals which have everything to do with Tory survival and nothing to do with the national interest.

Call it the M*GA syndrome (*Insert the initial  of your nation’s name), your Party, James, is impaled upon the current craze to look backwards rather than forwards. Although Adolph Hitler had the first idea, after the war it was Britain and the Tory Party who re-invented the craze.‘Make America Great Again’ ‘Make China Great Again’, ‘Make Russia Great Again’’ Now they’re all at it. Trump looks back to the good old days of American capitalist plutocracy. China looks even further back to the glories of the Ming and Song dynasties and Russia looks back to ancient Rus and its first Christian King Vladimir the Great. In Britain, we have MUKGA i.e. Make the UK Great aka Brexit. All these distortions of national histories have either already ended in tears or one day will. They all look backwards to fantasy versions of their histories rather than looking forward to genuinely new pastures.They all create chaos.

The well-sourced rumours that Sunak was looking for a ‘Swiss Type’ deal with the EU shows that he knows there is no way out of the Brexit mess and that a way back into Europe is necessary. He and you James will deny it, but this is the first sign of realism in the Tory ranks for many years. The OBR, the Office of Budget Responsibility - since the Truss debacle, the ultimate arbiter of all things financial and economic - has stated that “total UK imports and exports will eventually both be 15 per cent lower than had we stayed in the EU. This reduction in trade intensity drives the 4 per cent reduction in long-run potential productivity we assume will eventually result from our departure from the EU’. In other words, “Brexit has had a significant adverse impact on UK trade”. Many UK businesses are relocating to Europe and taking UK jobs with them. Incredibly, the London Stock Exchange has recently been overtaken by the Paris Bourse in terms of market values. The writing is on the wall James. No amount of talk about the buccaneering spirit or improving investment opportunities will replace the need for market access as the key driver of innovation and economic growth.

Today Sunak has retreated under fire from the Tory right wing, stressing that he will do nothing to backtrack on Brexit. But the cracks are there James. Eventually something will have to give or Britain will be condemned to the rut of low productivity, shortages of labour and market starvation for the long run.Brexit was the biggest own goal in our recent history. The end will not be pretty. Your party may split and the extreme right ‘fantasists’ may skew off into the arms of Nigel Farage.But by then we will have had another general election and a more modern party operating with the interests of the nation at its heart, may at last, after these twelve Tory years of mismanagement, be in power.

Our poor nation can only hope!

BH Your Concerned Constituent