No.265 Poor Rishi! Poor Britain!
Dear James,
What does it feel like, three years on from Britain’s exit from the largest market in the world? Still putting on the brave face are you? Still avoiding the difficult questions? Still unwilling to face the truth? But no problem can be solved without a clear facing up to reality. Our nation faces calamitous crises on many fronts and a political class swirling in a maelstrom of old school yah booing with almost none able to admit the truth. Our nation needs a total reset James. From the constitution, the voting system, the taxation system to the methods of party funding and questions of personal integrity we need to sit down as a nation to think. Do we want to be governed by an oligarchy of the rich and privileged whose main purpose is to protect its own or do we want a government who governs for all?
You’ll probably claim that at least you’ve now got a leader who claims to have stabilised your party’s fortunes.If only that were so! Poor Rishi. What a diminished figure he is. And what a diminished nation he leads after twelve years of Tory misrule. Today the IMF forecasts that the UK will be the only developed country whose GDP will shrink this year - even after sanctioned Russia! Our country groans under a regime of low productivity, sagging investment, an NHS in crisis, one of the world’s most depleted natural environments, a government mired in sleaze, a population struggling with the worst cost of living slump for many decades. `And a leader who with every day reveals his weakness in the great storm.
Remember last autumn? Sunak came bounding onto the stage with his youthful optimism only to be elbowed out of contention by Liz Truss (remember her?). When she crashed and burned, he was persuaded to ditch his ‘happy Rishi’ look for a more burdened grimace which did not suit him but was designed to show he had the gravitas to return the Tory party to sensible ways. It didn’t work and it won’t work James. Rishi’s a nice guy who got caught up by this seriously ‘un-nice’ party with its equally appalling record of economic mismanagement.
Last week a grinning Rishi toured the Northwest to announces the winners of his ‘Levelling Up Lottery’. The Eden Project for Morecambe got £50 million pounds - mere loose change in the scheme of things- but for Rishi it was the beginning of a new British resurgence. Poor Rishi was just rehashing the same old Tory Party game. His handlers told him to take off his jacket, roll up his sleeves, grin into a carefully chosen crowd …all you need to transform the nation! Hospitals, schools, new building projects, you name it, they’ve all done it. Or rather, not done it! Tory Party spin has long since lost any credibility.
Rishi began his premiership with an announcement that his would be a government of integrity, professionalism and accountability yet today he’s up to his neck in political mire. After weeks of twisting and turning Nadine Zahawi was finally found to have broken the ministerial codes seven times and Rishi found the ‘courage ‘to sack him. Dominic Raab, our deputy Prime Minister awaits a decision on multiple claims of bullying. Stella Braverman, she who resigned from Truss’s brief regime for breaking rules and was reinstated six days later by Rishi, still sits on the front bench. And who can forget the case of the notorious Gavin Williamson, sorry, ‘Sir Gavin’ Williamson, that multiple botcher of things governmental?
Rishi looks so small rowing his tiny boat across waters which he claims is an ocean leading to a ‘Global Britain‘. This sea is, in reality, the water filled crater better known as Twelve Years of Tory Misrule capped by the own goal of Brexit.Today Britain has 2.3 hospital beds per 100,000 population compared with France at 5.7 and Germany at 7.8.Trade from UK to EU is 16% lower than if Brexit had not happened. One in eight small exporters have temporarily or permanently stopped sales to the EU. Who would be willing to invest in a nation without a plan and a record of economic and political dysfunction. No wonder that today 57% of our nation wants to rejoin the EU!
Poor Rishi is the play thing of yesterday’s failed politicians. Boris Johnson still haw haws.Theresa May still stews.Liz Truss still dances like a modern day Kali while Jacob Rees-Mogg languorously pours poison from the back benches into the nation’s ears. God help us all!
Call me a ‘declinist’ James, I’d prefer ‘realist’. But until our politicians confront reality openly and head on, our permanent crises will continue. It’s time for the big reset James! It’s also time for the Tories to say sorry and leave the stage!
BH - Your Concerned Constituent