Paul Kirkley: Short to reign over us - Liz Truss's failure is writ large in neon
Well, that went well.
A few months ago, I wrote a column in this newspaper bemoaning the modern mania for testing every blindingly obvious theory to destruction. From Brexit to Trump to Johnson, via climate change and Covid, the litany of things we were all warned about – but insisted on doing anyway – is long and depressing, the consequences as disastrous as they were inevitable.
To that list we can now add – in flashing neon letters – the peculiar case of Mary Elizabeth Truss, whose short, inglorious premiership came to the most predictable end since Titanic. After just 49 days in office, she is less a footnote in history than a punchline. She wasn’t just outlasted by a lettuce – it seems it had a better grasp of politics and finance as well.
On becoming PM, Truss promised in a tweet to “hit the ground” from day one, and she delivered, delivered, delivered on that promise – taking the entire British economy down with her. And once again, it’s the rest of us who have to live with the consequences.
Truss’s fantasy economics were always going to explode on contact with reality, just as Brexit did, as Trump did, as Johnson did. Pesky old reality – it really has been making its presence felt in recent years, hasn’t it? To the chagrin of ideologues everywhere, it turns out you really cannae change the laws of physics, Captain. No matter how cast-iron your self-confidence, the universe just keeps on refusing to bend to your will. (Maybe the universe is part of that naughty anti-growth coalition?)
It would be nice to think that all the discredited cheerleaders for these years of chaos – from parliamentary wrecking balls like Steve Baker and Jacob Rees-Mogg to the editor of the Daily Mail and the Tufton Street ‘think’ tank wonks – will use this moment to look over their shoulders at the trail of wreckage, and humbly reflect on whether it might be time to just keep schtum for a bit. But they won’t, of course. They’ll just keep noisily demanding we all jump into the glaringly obvious man-trap.
Meanwhile, it’s a measure of how low the bar has now been set that I felt vaguely reassured by the idea of Rishi Sunak – a multi-millionaire hedge fund Brexiteer who boasted about moving money from deprived areas to the Tory shires – becoming PM, simply because he’s not a congenital idiot. It’s a feeling that lasted for all of about three hours, until he appointed Cruella… sorry, Suella Braverman as Home Secretary, just six days after she’d been sacked from the same job for a serious security breach. I know they say a week is a long time in politics, but this lot didn’t even give it that long.
While other girls dream of getting a pony or marrying a handsome prince*, Cruella’s heart is all aflutter at the thought of waving off a plane-load of asylum seekers on their way to a detention camp in Rwanda. Fair brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it?
Her reappointment, of course, was a political calculation from a Prime Minister desperately trying to keep a lid on the long-running civil war among his own MPs. In other words, it’s still all about party management, with the good of the country a distant second, and the rest of us are all still hostages in the endless Tory psychodrama. So much for that fresh start, eh?
*Yes, I know this isn’t what girls actually dream of, so don’t write in. It’s just that “becoming engineers and research chemists” didn’t sound as funny.
Bleak though the outlook is right now, at least we’ve avoided the real nightmare before Christmas of a second Boris Johnson premiership. So as Big Dog slinks off back to his kennel, spare a thought for poor Nadine Dorries, still curled up on Boris’s grave like a peroxide Greyfriars Bobby. And try not to hurt yourself laughing.
I’ll say one thing for Liz Truss – no, honestly, I will. Everyone keeps talking about how she’s destroyed the Conservatives’ record for fiscal responsibility. But didn’t that ship sail six years ago, with the whole B****t thing we’re not allowed to talk about any more?
In stark contrast to the Liz Truss demagogues of this world, here in Cambridge we pride ourselves on being a sober, rational people with a passion for empirical data and peer-reviewed research. So it brings me no pleasure to note that one of our most famous sons has been letting the side down again.
Yes, step forward Roger Waters – erstwhile leader of gazillion-selling prog rock noodlers Pink Floyd, who’s spent the past few months credulously spouting pro-Russian propaganda about Ukraine, while declaring America to be “the most evil” country on the map “by a factor of 10”, all served with a side order of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world’s finances. Bless. They’re lovely at that age, aren’t they? (He’s 79.)
As a result of his ravings, the singer (and that’s putting it generously) now claims to be on a “Ukrainian kill list”. I don’t know about that – but he should definitely be on everyone’s mute list.
As a child in Cambridge, Waters attended Morley Memorial Junior School and then Cambridgeshire High School for Boys (now Hills Road Sixth Form College). I don’t know if his experiences there are what led him to conclude, on Pink Floyd’s biggest hit, that, “we don’t need no edu-cay-shun, we don’t need no thought control”. But I can’t help thinking that, in hindsight, a bit more edu-cay-shun might have been exactly what he needed, actually.
I’m a big fan of Scottish folk-pop twins The Proclaimers, who are in town for a gig at the Corn Exchange this weekend. Such a big fan, in fact, that I’ve requested one of their songs, Like Comedy, at my funeral. (Don’t worry, I’m not ill – just planning ahead.) As well as being a cracking tune, it just has the perfect message about this messy business we call life (Misery comes around enough, you don’t need to invite him. And when he leaves, you should grab all the joy you can get). Do give it a listen if you get the chance.
Meanwhile, I’ll never forget my wife’s assertion that “one of them looks more like The Proclaimers than the other”. I know – makes your brain hurt, doesn’t it?
And finally… I read in last week’s Indy that the city’s e-scooter trial has been extended until 2024. So maybe it’s time I actually tried one out. I mean, it’s not like they’re hard to find – there are so many scattered around our village, it looks like a low-budget remake of Quadrophenia.
And I am tempted. But it takes me a while to embrace new technology. I only took an Uber for the first time a few months ago – it felt dangerously metropolitan – and I’m still working my way up to my first Deliveroo. I suppose there’s a part of me that thinks a 51-year-old man whizzing along on a glorified electric skateboard will look ridiculous. But then, the upside of being a 51-year-old man is that I no longer care about looking ridiculous.
Paul Kirkley was named Columnist of the Year at the 2021 UK Regional Press Awards. Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
