The last few days have seen an entire football team of Tory MPs try to convince us that they should be the next prime minister.
They’ve given dozens of speeches and written thousands of words to try and prove just how different they all are from Boris Johnson and one another but the public can see right through it. Because whoever replaces Johnson as PM is complicit in the same failures, lies and crimes as he is.
While Boris Johnson lied to Parliament about parties in Downing Street, they were silent. When he dodged questions about financial wrongdoing and billions of Covid cash going to Tory donors, they were silent.
While he lied to the Queen to prorogue parliament, they were silent. Only when enough of them saw the chance for personal gain did they act.
Whoever ends up in the run-off will want to pretend this is a fresh start from Tory sleaze. But the truth is they all sacrificed whatever integrity they had long ago to keep this shoddy show on the road.
While Tories squabble, your bills are going up, petrol prices are up, and the weekly shop is more expensive than ever. Politics can’t be an ego contest – it must be about action.
But as those in the race to replace Boris reduce their appeal to the tiny selectorate of Tory Party they get further and further from what the country needs. So while we are in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis, you might expect plans to support those in need and control inflation would top the agenda.
But the perverse incentives of a Tory leadership race mean the next PM won’t be picked for what they could do to help you or your family – but based on what bungs they can offer Tory MPs, millionaire party donors and the right-wing Tory party membership.
Collectively they have made spending commitments worth billions of pounds. But the benefits won’t come to those who need it.
Any lingering sense that the Conservatives are the party of economic responsibility has been shredded. Instead of setting out serious plans to help people with the cost-of-living crisis, just as we hear estimates of how much energy bills will go up again in October, we are presented with the spectacle of a race to the bottom on tax cuts – for the wealthy.
Good luck too if you ask for an explanation of just what public services will now be reduced to pay for this massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to the very top. Every single Conservative leadership candidate supported the government’s fiscal rules when they were passed into law in January, but now they are prepared to take a flamethrower to them.
If this race continues to limp on, we will have an answer to a question that has plagued political scientists for years, how much does it cost to become prime minister? All your common decency and several billion pounds of the public’s money.
We don’t just need a change at the top, we need a change of government. The only way we get that change and a fresh start is a general election and electing the Labour government our country needs.
NHS is sick but Nats have no cure
It feels like every week grim new records are set and broken in our NHS.
Performance declines and waiting lists grow –and it becomes easy to lose sight of the fact that each and every one of these statistics represents a real person. Last week waits at A&E hit their worst point on record. Thousands of people in an emergency were left stranded for hours on end, anxious and in pain, with their conditions getting worse.
In seven short days 1153 people were left in a waiting room for more than 12 hours. This is a full-scale crisis. The tireless efforts of heroic NHS staff are the one thing stopping services from falling into total chaos – but they are being forced to consider strike action to defend their pay and conditions.
Our NHS is on life support, workers exhausted, and lives at risk – but the SNP government are nowhere to be seen. Humza Yousaf, left, spends more time commentating on the emergency than fixing it, while Nicola Sturgeon is distracted by her own divisive agenda.
During the pandemic we all did our bit to protect the NHS and save lives – now I ask the SNP government to do the same.
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