FALLING APART AT THE SEAMS

‘The Girl is Mine’, unarguably the weakest track on the biggest-selling album of all-time, was a duet between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson that enforced suspicions as to the occasionally sappy tendencies of the former and the treacly shortcomings of the latter. Perhaps the key moment in this gooey ballad came towards the end with a toe-curling spoken passage in which Jacko claimed ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’. Bizarrely, the track was issued as a single ahead of ‘Billie Jean’, a worldwide chart-topper which gave a clearer picture of the jukebox smashes ‘Thriller’ actually contained. But that sick-bucket line, ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter’, returned to my head today when I heard Liz Truss had claimed ‘I’m a fighter, not a quitter’ with an absence of convincing conviction. Yeah, I guess most might think more of Richard Nixon declaring ‘I have never been a quitter’ just before he announced his resignation from the White House – or maybe even his similarly hollow ‘I am not a crook’ declaration the year before; but I thought of Michael Jackson.

Not that the Prime Minister can look forward to her own equivalent of the pop cultural domination Michael Jackson enjoyed in the wake of his 1982 album’s global success; if anything, her career seems set to be as short as La Toya Jackson or one of those other minor members of the Jackson clan that embarked upon ill-advised solo outings. This week has seen Liz Truss’s dwindling power diminished even further by what effectively amounts to a Downing Street coup; the relocation of Remoaner technocrat Jeremy Hunt from the backbenches to Downing Street, who then proceeded to bin the majority of the promises made by his predecessor at No.11 in his ‘courageous’ mini-budget, has reduced the hapless Truss to little more than a redundant figurehead living on borrowed time. A piece in ‘Spiked’ compared Hunt’s inaugural statement as Chancellor to a broadcast by a general who had just installed himself as President of a banana republic, and Truss’s immediate absence from the Commons following Hunt’s takeover, leaving Penny Mordaunt to do a far better job as an eleventh-hour substitute, prompted further questions as to the PM’s ability to govern.

And then, having lost her Chancellor in record time, Truss loses her Home Secretary, with Suella Braverman quitting after 43 days, apparently in disagreement with Truss over that old Tory chestnut, immigration. Kwasi Kwarteng became the shortest-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer whose term in office wasn’t curtailed by death, and Braverman’s brief run at the Home Office is only outdone in the record books by George Nugent-Temple-Grenville, who held the post for four days in December 1783 – and I looked through the list to confirm this; plenty only did the job for a few months, but nobody else in the past 239 years who wasn’t a caretaker has had so short a stint at Braverman. Yes, it’s sadly inevitable: I’m going to have to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, for to lose one Minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. Just over a month in the job and ‘Team Truss’ has already seen two holders of the Four Great Offices of State gone. With each passing day it seems Liz Truss’s position is weakened even further, and one cannot but wonder how much longer she can cling on to what now is merely the illusion of power.

So, the parcel is passed yet again as one unelected PM essentially makes way for another in all-but name; considering the amount of options flying around social media – Sunak installed as PM, Hunt installed as PM, Boris reinstated as PM etc. – it certainly appears the Conservative Party imagines it can simply keep chopping and changing leaders at will without any recourse to the electorate. Six interminable weeks that felt more like six interminable months of a private leadership contest and they’re not happy with the lame duck they selected; well, tough shit. Most of us who aren’t members of the Conservative Party aren’t happy either, but we didn’t have a say. You chose her; you grin and bear it with her. The way things are going, even the drawn-out tedium of a leadership contest seems poised to be sidestepped if the feverish Westminster gossip is to be believed, which makes the current political system feel even more like that of China; should Truss be ousted and replaced by one more PM the country had no say in the choosing of, why don’t the opposition parties get together and table a motion of No Confidence in His Majesty’s Government? Chances are they’d win with a far bigger majority than the solitary vote that swung it for Thatcher’s Tories in 1979. Or maybe they’re just revelling in the chaos and are anticipating things getting worse – all the better for them, of course.

The last time I can recall a Prime Minister being under such pressure from her own Party to walk the plank wasn’t so much Boris barely a few months ago, but Theresa May in 2019; the difference here is that May had been PM for almost three years at that point, whereas Truss has been in the job for little more than a month. Even if one were to go easy on her and regard this phase as ‘teething troubles’, the absolute unmitigated f***-up of a country she’s spectacularly failing to lead makes the desperate need for someone to act decisively even more urgent. Everywhere one turns at the moment, it’s impossible not to conclude we’re trapped in an irreversible decline. From empty supermarket shelves to soaring prices to public sector strikes to the impossibility of securing a GPs appointment to the police standing by and applauding their ideologically-compatible activist pals disrupting daily life to the prospect of a revival of the Three-Day Week’s candlelit suppers – and then look at the utter shower of shit allegedly running the show. People’s spirits may have been broken by lockdown, but how much more can we take of this?

Naturally, these are great days for Sir Keir Starmer. Because we’re lumbered with a depressing choice between two parties to lead us, the abysmal Labour alternative would probably achieve a landslide were a General Election to be called tomorrow. The man who thinks it’s wrong to state the biological fact that only women have cervixes, who took the knee before George Floyd was cold, and who nominated his despicable old sidekick Tom Watson for a peerage – thus rendering the House of Lords an even more disreputable retirement home for crooked freeloaders than it is already – looks set to be Prime Minister as things stand. Chances are we’ll probably have two or three more Tories in No.10 before we actually get to 2024, but the fact Starmer is closing in on Downing Street and it’s less than three years since the Conservative Party won an outstanding majority that gifted them one hell of a platform just shows how impressively the Tories have squandered their gains of 2019. Boris was given a mandate by the electorate; but Boris is gone now, and that mandate has gone with him.

It goes without saying that it’s not easy attempting to write a post on this subject and get it to you before more shit hits the fan and everything I’ve written is already out of date. News of Suella Braverman’s resignation broke when I was about four paragraphs in, forcing me to backtrack and insert a fresh paragraph including the news. As I write this final paragraph, I see a vote is to be taken this evening on the Government’s energy policy, with a specific reference to reintroducing fracking; from what I can gather, many Tory MPs face losing the whip if they carry out their intentions to vote against the PM’s wishes; and if they lose the whip, their letters to the 1922 Committee demanding the PM’s removal will be rendered null and void, thus giving Truss breathing space. But it’ll still only be a brief pause before what looks like an inevitable exit. Who knows? Maybe by the time you read this, she’ll be gone anyway. A General Election won’t solve all our problems, if any; but if there’s to be another change at the top, the electorate have to decide, not the Tory backbenches.

© The Editor

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CREAM OF THE CRAP

I can’t quite decide if this reboot of ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ is funnier than the original or if I’m laughing in all the wrong places, what with it having adopted the pseudo-documentary style of ‘The Thick of It’, a tactic which can throw the viewer. This week’s was a classic episode, however; in case you missed it, that rather implausible comic character called Boris had a blazing row with his girlfriend – though unbeknownst to him it was being recorded by a Remainer neighbour, who then flogged it to the Guardian! All kinds of hilarity ensued, with Boris, under pressure from his weedy workplace colleague Jeremy (the) Cunt, refusing to answer questions on the matter via the rib-tickling route of talking over whoever asked the question. Well worth a watch if you can locate it on the iPlayer.

I would say ‘but seriously’ if that didn’t seem out of kilter with the comedy narrative – but seriously, this would be a highly entertaining shit-show if there wasn’t so much at stake. With Michael Gove suspiciously edged out of the race, the sole obstacle between Boris Johnson and No.10 would appear to be Boris Johnson – and whilst Boris’s team are doing their best to present him as a responsible politician with a vision as they prepare for his coronation, there’s only so much they can control once the man himself is under the spotlight they’ve tried to keep him out of. At the same time, there are some unsurprisingly dirty tricks at play on both sides right now; the tactical voting that eliminated the man who destroyed Boris’s bid three years ago belatedly brought a touch of Westminster Dark Arts to proceedings.

Smarmy little troll he may well be, but Gove was the one contender who could have really gone for the jugular – and Boris’s team knew it. However, the convenient timing of last weekend’s developments has shown the Hunt camp is taking a sneakier approach. Knowing all-too well that Bo-Jo’s chaotic private life is as prone to gaffes as his public life, his enemies have probably been on stand-by ever since the race gathered pace, anticipating an incident that can then be weaponised as further evidence of Boris’s unsuitability for high office. They didn’t have long to wait. They received it thanks to the unique Neighbourhood Watch scheme in operation on Carrie Symonds’ street; and the added bonus of a ‘domestic abuse’ angle also gave the green light to opportunistic Opposition gobshites like Jess Phillips to accelerate the anti-Boris campaign.

However, simplifying the contest to a one-sided battle between the school swot and the school bully tends to obscure the ammunition that could be used by the favourite against the outsider. As a relatively loyal member of Mrs May’s far-from devoted Cabinet, Jeremy Hunt offers a similar ‘safe pair of hands’ option that the outgoing PM presented in 2016. But it says a lot about where we are now that Hunt’s shameful role in News Corporation’s attempted takeover of BSkyB back in 2011 – not to mention his far-from illustrious record as Health Secretary – has been barely mentioned by his opponent’s team, so confident of success that they haven’t even thought it necessary to hurl a few stones from their glass house. The irony is that Hunt has more than enough skeletons in his closet to keep them busy, and they may have to resort to them if the headlines continue to bring Boris’s numerous failings into focus.

Tony Benn’s wife Caroline once said that Prime Ministers generally fall into one of three categories: Pedestrians, Fixers or Madmen. What we know of both the former Foreign Secretary and the incumbent one suggests neither fits the middle description, so the choice would appear to be Pedestrian or Madman. A strong Opposition would have rendered the Tories’ squabbles irrelevant, mind; they’d be so far behind in the polls that a successful vote of no confidence in a no-deal Brexit Boris would trigger a General Election and throw the party out of office – giving Boris the shortest premiership in history, breaking the unenviable 119 days of George Canning in 1827 (though the duelling PM did have the excuse of his tenure being curtailed by death). But, of course, this isn’t a Labour Party led by Harold Wilson that can boast heavyweights of the calibre of Jenkins, Callaghan, Castle, Crosland, Healey, Benn and Foot; it’s Jezza’s frontbench of Watson, Starmer, Abbott and Thornberry. This is the team the Tories are so terrified of that they will back Boris at all costs. This is what it has come to.

Under normal circumstances, Bo-Jo presents any opponent with such an embarrassment of riches to use against him that the mere thought of him running for PM would be a non-starter from the off; under normal circumstances, he would never have got this far. But these are not normal circumstances. Lest we forget, three years ago a majority of the electorate voted to leave the EU; three years later, we still haven’t left. The ramifications of Brexit have now claimed two Prime Ministers and judging by Boris’s performance on the hustings, a third scalp is on the cards. After one disastrous dullard, the Conservative fear of a Corbyn Government will most likely avoid another and instead opt for a rogue – even if there’s more to it than a straightforward scrap with Mr Nice Guy on one side and Mr ‘I wouldn’t trust him with my wallet or my wife’ on the other.

Then again, it’s not as if we haven’t had rogues at No.10 before; the gallery of past Prime Ministers lining the wall beside the Downing Street staircase contains its fair share of reprobates even Boris Johnson would struggle to compete with. The Duke of Grafton (PM 1768-70) paraded his courtesan mistress around society whilst his wife the Duchess had a baby with her paramour; Lord Melbourne (PM 1834-41) had been married to Byron’s insane lover Lady Caroline Lamb and had himself been blackmailed in a sex scandal; and Lord Palmerston (PM 1855-65) was known to have fathered his own ‘love children’ as well as being cited in divorce proceedings. So, it’s fair to say we have been here before. But, certainly in the case of Palmerston, there was substantial substance beneath the superficial surface; can that honestly be said of a self-serving, ideological vacuum like Boris, whose track record in office is laughable?

By disregarding its traditional support systems and courting the favour of minority metropolitan causes, the political class on both sides has created the monster that is Boris, just as American Democrats created Trump. Whether Tories abandoning the small-c conservative shires or Labour doing likewise with the deindustrialised working-classes, this abandonment has had its ultimate expression in Brexit; the fact that, three bloody years on, we still haven’t moved proves the political class has learnt nothing. The impasse that is entirely of the political class’s making has given the kiss of life to Nigel Farage and is poised to make Boris f***ing Johnson Prime Minister. You reap what you sow, Westminster. It’s just a shame the rest of us will again have to pay for your wretched incompetence.

© The Editor

CARRY ON DOCTOR

There aren’t many professions that could be called honourable, though it is ironic that one of the most discredited in recent years – that of Member of Parliament – should have all those who belong to the club dignified with the prefix ‘honourable’. It is these far-from ‘honourable’ gentlemen and ladies who have recently been exercising their recurring habit of trying to squeeze as much as they can out of another profession whilst parting with the minimum amount of money, in this particular case junior doctors. That rather misleading term doesn’t mean they’re making impossible demands on Doogie Howser M.D., but on any doctor, from those who’ve just graduated from medical school to those who’ve been in the business of saving lives for a decade. Yesterday, junior doctors embarked on a further 24 hours of strike action in protest at the Government’s obstinate refusal to budge on their new ideas for the NHS.

Last November, the Government promised an 11% pay-rise for junior doctors, but soured the pill in the small-print with plans to increase the working hours, especially at weekends. Cutting corners in a time of ‘austerity’ has become a hallmark of Cameron’s reign, though patients whose lives are in the hands of overworked and underpaid medical men aren’t receiving much in the way of consideration, particularly when the uniquely charmless Health Secretary Jeremy Rhyming-Slang Hunt starts spouting his spiel.

He was confronted by emails from junior doctors during his appearance on the Andrew Marr Sunday morning show last week, but remained resolute in shifting the blame onto the BMA. ‘Mr Hunt has made me feel demoralised, insulted and cheap; he implies we are the problem,’ said one of these emails. ‘It’s so grim on the frontline now; I sometimes work 14 or 15 hours straight without a second even to eat.’ The starting salary for a doctor is just under £23,000 a year – top end of the scale nearer £70,000. For an MP, let alone a Cabinet Minister such as Mr Hunt, the average annual salary is £74,000. All aboard the Westminster gravy train!

The average salary in the UK is £27,000 a year, reduced to under £22,000 once the likes of National Insurance, taxes and student loan payments are taken into account. Police officers earn under £25,000, below the national average. Teachers fare a little better at just under £34,000, though which is the most stressful profession of the two is arguable: coming into daily contact with criminals who can at least be put behind bars or coming into daily contact with surly adolescents whose most severe admonishment is suspension.

And talking of stressful jobs, fire-fighters earn an average of between £21,583 and £35,664 depending on rank. Nurses start on a salary of £21,692 and can progress as high as £34,876. Still pales next to the salary of an MP, doesn’t it. Remember – £74,000 a year. Which provides the most necessary service to the public? It’s evident from the statistics alone that those within society whose professions can contribute towards the saving of lives – doctors, nurses, fire-fighters and the police (on a good day) – earn a pittance in relation to the vital importance of the job they actually do.

By contrast, bankers in the City of London can earn upwards of £550,000 a year, depending on how long they’ve been in the business (and that doesn’t include bonuses). These men were more responsible than anyone else for the economic meltdown of 2008, yet they seem largely immune to the cutbacks imposed on professions that play a rather significant part in the continued running of society.

Mind you, some men who kick a football around a pitch for 90 minutes at Premier League grounds every weekend earn more than all essential professions are paid over twelve months in the space of a week. In this country’s top ten of highest-paid players, Chelsea have a trio of footballers whose weekly wage is between £185,000 and £200,000. Yes, that’s what they take home a week. Chelsea are currently 13^th in the table.

Junior doctors haven’t gone on strike at the drop of a hat; the vast majority have done so out of sheer desperation. They’re not led by some self-aggrandising bolshie 70s throwback looking for a fight. Negotiations between doctors and government have been ongoing ever since the proposals for a seven-day NHS were first mooted three years ago, but yesterday’s 24 hour strike has now resulted in a threat from the Government that they will impose their contract if this goes on. The BMA were prepared to accept half of the 11% pay rise offered on the condition that extra payments for working on Saturdays were retained; the Government rejected this proposal and have continued to badmouth the BMA and dispense disinformation within the media to support their stance ever since.

However, just as cutting police numbers and proposing the reduction of street lighting seems an odd way to go about crime prevention, expecting junior doctors to work longer hours without additional pay appears a curious strategy on the part of a government professing to care about the wellbeing of patients. The situation appears to have reached an impasse. Doctors who are enduring 14 or 15 hours without a break from a job in which a clear head and the ability to concentrate are crucial qualifications should be top of the list when it comes to the PM’s favourite phrase, ‘Hard Working People’. Put your money where your mouth is, Mr Cameron, and reward that hard work.

© The Editor