A couple of big lessons for us in the UK this month.
Lesson 1: If you are the Prime Minister, you can probably tell about two big fat lies a year at most.
The national digestive system can process a couple of fibs over the course of a year……parliament, the press and the public will chew hard on them but eventually they will be swallowed. However, try a third lie and the whole system gets constipated and hard to pass. You can’t start eating a new plate of fresh whoppers when you are still on the toilet dealing with the last one. It makes people tetchy and they don’t know if they’re coming or going.
Or to put that all another way……piling Partygate on top of Wallpapergate on top of Chris Pincher, BoJo turned the Westminster digestive system into chaos. It got messy.
Lesson 2: Hiring known sex pests doesn’t work out. I thought we all knew this but it turns out we didn’t. And bizarrely, we have learnt that, against all common sense, you can get away with it for months (actually years) at a time.
So, two very important lessons going forwards guys.
The third lie that brought BoJo down involved MP Chris Pincher who was accused of groping 2 men after getting drunk. Pincher resigned but BoJo didn’t withdraw the whip from him.
Pincher already had to resign as a whip in 2019 for groping people and faced investigations into groping in 2017 also.
Despite years of warnings, BoJo appointed him as a whip for a second time in February.
BoJo claimed “HR law” meant he wasn’t allowed to NOT give Pincher a job. No such law exists. He then stated that “he wasn't aware of the previous allegations” and that “he considers the matter closed”.
BoJo said “he wasn’t aware of any previous scandal”, then changed it to “he wasn’t aware of any specific scandal” and then changed it again to “he wasn’t aware of any serious specific scandal”. Then he said he was aware of “rumours of scandals” but only the unproven ones. Are you still with me?
Pretty much everyone and anyone called for him to go. Enough was enough. And still BoJo didn’t resign……claiming that he had to stay because 14 million voted for him. In fact 25,351 voted for him because he is a constituency MP, not a president. Pretty basic politics surely?
So 57 MP’s decided that there was a whiff of a third lie and resigned in just over 24 hours and he couldn’t fill the positions to maintain a cabinet. There was only one thing remaining……the lectern in front of number 10.
BoJo’s resignation speech contained not one scintilla of contrition……just a bragging list of arguable successes and blaming others for his predicament. Boasting, blathering and blaming everyone but himself. The manner of his departure should tell you everything you need to know - no dignity, just delusion and desperation to retain power no matter the harm it does to our country.
What a terrible final speech by a man who turned out to be a truly terrible Prime Minister.
The Numbers
The back drop to most financial and economic news is the continuing rise of inflation……at the fastest rate for more than 40 years, driven by higher petrol and food costs.
UK inflation jumped to 9.4% brought about by significant rises in the cost of petrol, milk, cheese and eggs.
What does it say about this country when supermarkets have started putting security tags on Cheese and Lurpak? When Lurpak is described as 'spreadable' is that the product itself or the payments for it?
On the back of the rise in inflation, the cost of servicing Government debt has hit its highest point in 25 years. The cost of interest payments on Government debt was £19.4 billion, more than double that of 12 months ago and the highest since records began in 1997.
It’s no surprise that the cost of living is dominating the leadership debate between Rishi and Lizzie as the increased cost of pretty much everything is the hot topic. The easiest thing is to put more money in the pockets of the masses through tax cuts……it’s always a vote winner.
Yes, I know you are fed up with the Tory leadership contest already but we will be hearing a lot about tax cuts from Rishi Sunak (not now, but perhaps later) and Liz Truss (both now and later).
Lizzie has sought to draw a clear difference between herself and Rishi, promising tax cuts from "day one" that will include:
- Reversing the Health and Social Care Levy which saw a 1.25% rise in national insurance
- Cancelling a planned increase in Corporation Tax from 19% to 25%.
- Suspending the green energy levy added to energy bills.
Those tax cuts come at a cost of around £30 billion and there is a real risk that it could push inflation even higher (and interest rates as a consequence).
The biggest subject they are avoiding is the jobs crisis……there are too few people to do the available work.
There was, as so often, something for everybody in the latest official labour market figures. They include the headline grabbing announcement of a record 2.8% fall in real-terms of regular pay over the past 12 months. Those looking for evidence that the economy is not about to dive into recession could see it in a very strong 296,000 rise in employment for the past three months.
There was also evidence that employment growth has slowed though….but job vacancies stand at a whopping 1.3 million.
The labour market is a bit like watching the weather. It has been running very hot and for many firms recruitment difficulties have never been greater. Few people expected that we would emerge from the pandemic with the most intense labour shortages in the modern era. The question is whether we will need a big storm, in the shape of a recession, to ease those shortages.
An increase in unemployment might not be a bad thing in the short term caused by business failure. Latest information on businesses that have fallen into arrears on their bounceback loan repayments suggests that there is trouble brewing.
20% of small businesses are now in arrears with the covid support loans, which is 193,000 firms. Perhaps the centrepiece of Rishi’s plan to help smaller firms during the depths of the pandemic when he was Chancellor simply kicked the can along the road.
Trump of the Month
Let’s not mess about with preamble……this month’s Trump of The Month can only be the Conservative Party.
So BoJo has gone. Well, no, he’s resigned and will stay on because he’s a thoroughly decent chap with a moral compass we can all be proud of. Or perhaps he needs a couple of months to take his gold wallpaper down?
And so we are left with BoJo as Prime Minister and not Prime Minister. It seems astonishing that a man who has been forced to resign due to sleaze and chaos he created is now trusted to remain as caretaker until such times that the useless Tories decide what they should do to replace him.
But this is a Tory party facing the truth that they have been complicit in enabling one of the most dangerously incompetent, untrustworthy and selfish individuals to have ever occupied Number 10 for as long as he has.
This is a man who went through three ethics advisers and then made the position redundant so that he could behave as he wanted rather than being made accountable to some pretty basic morals.
But the deafening cries from the Tory party of “enough is enough” that toppled BoJo are from the same people who have watched him take a flame thrower to their party and our constitution for three long years. Mess up after mess up. Lie after lie. What were the Tory party thinking? That he would improve at some point?
If the reason that so many Tory MP’s wanted BoJo to go was because of a lack of trust and integrity……why did you put him in power in the first place? This hasn’t been an overnight change in character……the evidence has been there for decades.
The Tory party should hang their head in shame. Just look at what we are left with……the lowest trust in politics ever……a governing party with a complete lack of ethics, morals, direction or ideas……a worthless ministerial code……an oven ready Brexit that even BoJo admits is unworkable……a covid response that has been found to be criminally negligent.
It is sobering to think that this is the same group of useless MPs that have decided that it should be Rishi or Lizzie to take over.
What an absolute mess.
Trump Lunacy Rating: 10 / 10
And Finally……
“Behind every beautiful thing, there’s been some kind of pain.”
Bob Dylan
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