Boris Johnson has gone – for the moment at least
His replacement is the current Foreign Secretary Lizz Truss, a loyal follower who has remained faithful to him until the bitter end – announcing at her victory speech that he was admired “from Kyiv to Carlisle” – thereby confirming that the political class was aware that Scotland (and Northern Ireland) had seen through Johnson’s lies. These lies were so many and so bad that Peter Oborne (normally a reliable right-winger) devoted last year an entire book to them
Truss has just announced a new and extraordinarily right-wing Cabinet - reflecting the promises which had been made to the 140,000 Conservative party members whose votes were counted and to whom she was appealing during the 6 weeks of the contest. It should be noted that she obtained the support of only 47.2% of the members – and yet government requires a plurality in trade union voting and announced an intention to require that in any future Scottish referendum. Three out of four of the great Offices of State may have gone to brown-skinned people – but they are all privileged and privately educated right-wingers. 23 of the 31 cabinet members were privately educated.
“The New Statesman” has just published that it is the least experienced Cabinet of the past 50 years. With such inexperience always goes arrogance – and downfall. Richard Murphy gave us today an interesting Twitter thread about the clear signals the country has been given that the main issue for the future is a smaller state
James o’Brien is one of the UK’s most eloquent and outspoken radio broadcasters and gave the country yesterday a passionate assessment of the Johnson regime. He led with a basic question – people have know for years about his basic dishonesty. Why, despite this, have so many people continued to support him? Indeed a majority of the Tory membership still prefer him over any of the candidates in the recent contest. Liz Truss continues not only to support him but to demonstrate every day her ability to outdo him in false claims.
After Brexit, I spent many posts trying to understand what it was about English society that had created the anti-European mood in which Johnson personally had played such a crucial role – with his dispatches from Brussels. I may just have found the key – it is Chums – how a tiny caste of Oxford Tories took over the UK; by Simon Kuper (2022) with the author interviewed here
By 1984, emboldened by the twin forces of Falklands-era Thatcherism and “Brideshead Revisited” on the telly, archaic Tory voices – carefully laced with ironies by Johnson – were raucous again.
They had all been educated at private schools such as Eton
Though the clique around Johnson believed they were born to power, unlike the swashbucklers of empire they admired, they lacked a cause to fight for. Prime Ministers such as Atlee, MacMillan and Eden had fought in the First World War where they had commanded working -class men. Other PM in the 2nd World War
Kuper’s book details how that “cause” was eventually drummed up by other near contemporaries at Oxford, all of whom fell under the sway of Norman Stone, the polymathic history professor, alcoholic and sometime adviser to Margaret Thatcher. Eg Dan, now Lord, Hannan, and the most intense of undergraduates, Dominic Cummings.
And it;s also good on psychological aspects – inviting us to imagine how such people, bloated on tales of empire and then becoming Ministers, reacted on their increasingly frequent visits to Brussels to the translated technocratic discourse
I have just listened to Truss’s first speech as Prime Minister as she returned from accepting the Queen’s invitation to form a government. There was not a single word of conciliation – nothing about reaching out to represent everyone in the country. Everything in the speech was about her agenda of tax cuts, enterprise and opportunity. I sense we are in for a taste of class war.
On the same spot, 43 years earlier, Margaret Thatcher – after an equally difficult period in UK history - had used a very different tone
“And I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope” and to all the British people—howsoever they voted—may I say this. Now that the Election is over, may we get together and strive to serve and strengthen the country of which we're so proud to be a part
Subsequent experience indicated that it may have been a bit hypocritical – bit it was gracious. But grace is not something our new PM does
My friend Boffy is much better on economics than I am – and has an excellent analysis here https://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2022/09/trusss-plan-to-bankrupt-britain.html
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