If you’ve found the past few days in British politics tumultuous, spare a thought for the chair of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, who reportedly returned to work on Monday after a half-term break in Athens to a pile of letters from rebellious Tory MPs trying to oust Liz Truss. We can only imagine his serenity as he contemplated the wonder of democracy at the Parthenon, before wandering into Westminster, putting down his carrier bag of duty free, and asking:“What did I miss?”
Just a little, Graham! Over the past few days, Truss’s entire government agenda has been rewritten – and worse still, not even by her. Today’s emergency statement by the new chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, confirmed the kind of change in direction that typically causes whiplash: almost all of the remaining tax cuts from the mini-budget have been scrapped, with even Truss’s flagship plan to cap rising energy prices scaled back.
Watching Hunt set out the new plans with the union jack behind him, it was hard to tell who exactly was the prime minister. It was all very “the military has taken control of the airwaves”. Penny Mordaunt later explained to the House of Commons as she stood in for Truss: “The prime minister is not under a desk.” Always good to clarify. At this point, Truss is less prime minister and more a competition winner, like a primary school pupil given a tour of parliament and told they are allowed to “run the country for a day” while the grownups actually make the decisions.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, the “grownups” include a health secretary who hates certain commas more than smokers giving children cancer, a chancellor whose nemesis is junior doctors, and Grant Shapps. Not that you’d notice. The standard for leadership in this country is now so low that the Conservatives could appoint Hannibal Lecter to steady the ship and sections of the British commentariat would praise him as a “safe pair of hands”.
Hunt hasn’t specified as yet which public services will face the squeeze to make up the estimated £72bn shortfall, but he will require “all departments”, including health, to make “difficult decisions”.
“Savings” has a comforting implication of efficiency – some fat that can safely be trimmed. Rather than, y’know, brutal cuts to already collapsing public services that are only “needed” to offset the government’s own disastrous choices.
On the grand list of obscenities the Conservative party has inflicted over the past 12 years in power, further wrecking public services in order to pay for its own foul-up, all as poverty and needs spiral, is surely up there. Truss is launching Austerity 2.0 with a mandate so nonexistent that even her own chancellor didn’t vote for her. The government is essentially now just a living embodiment of the hotdog costume meme, crashing in and surveying the economic carnage while promising it will find the guy who did this.
Don’t panic, though, because the Tory party is already lining up its next guy. Senior Conservatives are said to be holding talks this week that could lead to the swift removal of Truss as leader. To which anyone’s response is likely, “PLEASE GOD NO. NOT ANOTHER ONE.” The idea that the solution to Truss’s premiership is to go back to the Conservative membership is very much like seeing the police tape up a crime scene and inviting the murderer to return to have another go.
Even Tory MPs seem to think so – there is talk that they could draw up a shortlist of two candidates, and agree among themselves who would be PM and deputy to avoid going to the members. As they lurch on to their fifth leader in six years, we risk running through the entire Conservative party in ever decreasing quality until every single Tory MP has had a go. By 2024, the next PM will be the chasm where Suella Braverman’s soul should be. Or a lettuce.
I don’t know about you, but I spend much of my day now pondering how I’ll survive the next two years until a general election, a plan that so far involves drinking bucket-gin and living off-grid. It’s not like we’re guaranteed electricity this winter anyway. As mortgage rates rise and food banks have to ration provisions, Britain is feeling increasingly uninhabitable. Indeed, if the government’s cost-cutting plan to let patients get antibiotics without seeing a GP goes ahead, we may have all been wiped out by mass antibiotic resistance by then anyway. At this point, I’d class that as a merciful escape.
Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist
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