Apparently the PM has not been lying for the last week by saying that he had not made his mind up about the cancellation of HS2. No, he finally made his mind up the night before yesterday’s conference speech, just without telling the cabinet, or anyone else it seems.
Why would he not consult the Cabinet on the abandonment of the largest infrastructure project in the country? Surely the Secretaries of State for Environment and Business and quite a few others would have strong opinions on the issue. Surely they tried to ask the PM whether he was really planning to cancel HS2? Surely they wanted to be involved? Let’s face it, they have had at least a week to raise it with the PM.
Maybe that is the key, he didn’t want to hear what they thought because his mind was made up ages ago, because he wanted to look strong, because he was afraid they would reject his proposal and because he thought it would leak; which it did anyway.
But this is no way to run a boy scout camp let alone a country.
The message that this sends is not just that the UK’s word and long term plans cannot be trusted but that they can be changed on the whim of one man, for internal party political reasons. The Tory party stopped putting the country first years ago.
This is how we got Brexit. It is a mad, incompetent and damaging way to run a country.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
For all of the hype and gushing enthusiasm, the Windsor Framework aside, I can’t point to any other area where Sunak has shown that he is anything other than awful at the actual politics as well as underwhelming in the presentation.
Starmer has his faults, he doesn’t inspire passion and so far has struggled to articulate a sense of vision to the electorate, but he has done the basics of getting his own party in shape and in line.
Sunak had a free hit once the BlunderTruss had gone off. He chose to lean on the hard-right and make the mistake of his predecessors and let the hard right tail wag the dog rather than have it docked. He had the joker of a snap-election and a huge amount of cover from the usual places.
He’s shown himself to be craven, opportunistic and predictable - willing to go for broke rather than demonstrate the prudence on which he launched his tilt for the job in which he finished third in a two horse race behind Liz and a Lettuce.
A decent Conservative would be doing all they could to recover the economy and ensure that any incoming government had the best chance of success.
His comments of the death of consensus ought to concern us all. We won’t have to wait long for a foretaste of where people assume the Tories to be headed - they’re already there.