From the Economist..
Welcome aboard this Zealot Airways flight to God only knows where. Your pilot is Liz Truss. She’s never flown before, but insists she knows what she’s doing. And her cabin crew all swear she’ll make a great pilot.
Anyone who questions her flying ability belongs to the Anti-Gravity-Coalition and will be roundly ignored.
Your co-pilot is Kwasi Kwarteng. He’s never flown one of these things before either, but he went to Eton so that’s all right, as that cocksure gaggle of entitled geese get away with murder in modern Britain.
As the plane takes off, you may notice a degree of instability caused by one wing being much heavier than the other; the right wing, naturally, as no self-respecting libertarian crackpot pilot wants a left wing to slow their progress.
Our destination is, well, no-one can say for sure. Somewhere over the capitalist rainbow. A land where shredding environmental protections, encouraging people to eat fat-saturated rotten food, building more roads, fracking the hell out of the earth for no good reason, sucking more oil and gas from beneath the sea while pooh-poohing solar energy is all the rage.
As is cutting taxes for the wealthy, all in the name of creating a small state.
But only for the poor and the ordinary folk, who will be prevented from demonstrating about the environment, or from striking about their never-increasing pay. They will dwell in a place of small protection where the NHS has been left to dwindle and die. But don’t worry about the wealthy and the corporations, as they will live in a commodiously baggy state where they will be allowed to do what they wish. Small states are for small people, you see.
On second thoughts, I think I’ll get off this flight…
Of course, it was not gravity Truss turned against in her Tory conference speech last week, but something called the anti-growth coalition. As far as anyone call tell, this sensible collective comprises anyone who disagrees with Liz Truss, whatever party they belong to, including her own.
Former party leader Lord Hague, for instance, has said that choosing faster growth over the environment would be a huge error. As anyone can see, unless you are wearing dark-tinted libertarian glasses found in the bargain bin at Old Ronnie Reagan’s corner shop.
Truss has already hit plenty of turbulence after her unfunded tax-cutting mini-Budget sent the markets into turmoil, causing the Bank of England to panic and spend billions, while accidentally shredding Britain’s reputation for sound money.
This also led to a last minute U-turn in her policy to cut the top rate of tax, the need for which even many of those who would have benefited could not understand.
Sometimes it is the ridiculous details that catch your eye. Truss’s team have dubbed her ‘pro-growth’ reforms Operation Rolling Thunder. That was the name the US gave to its aerial bombardment in the Vietnam War – a cruel policy and a failure, so perhaps Truss & Co are on to something after all.
Amusingly, the Times reports that the policy is now being referred to as “Operation Shitstorm”.
And don’t you just love the Economist saying that Truss is set to be remembered as the prime minister whose grip on power was “the shortest in British political history”.
“Ms Truss entered Downing Street on September 6th. She blew up her own government with a package of unfunded tax cuts and energy-price guarantees on September 23rd. Take away the ten days of mourning after the death of the queen, and she had seven days in control. That is the shelf-life of a lettuce.”
Ah, say hello to Liz Lettuce.
And here is something else from her speech, the bit where she said she was “not interested in how many two-for-one offers you buy at the supermarket”.
And yet, quite literally, she was foisted upon us by a “two-for-one offer” in the bad bargain aisle at the shoddy supermarket of Tory politics.
Buy one Boris and get a free Lettuce…