Truss Acronyms Haven’t Got A Scooby

As it becomes clear that the membership of the Tory party will mostly not vote for a leadership candidate who is not white, so the prospect of Liz Truss as our next Prime Minister must be faced. And the omens are not good: today’s headlines suggest she thinks that a cut in VAT will provide the required help for those facing a steepling rise in their energy bills come October.

Why she should form such a belief is easily explained by the news that she is, more or less, in hock to three acronyms, none of which is going to provide the answers to a looming economic crisis which in turn has the silver lining of the Tories being cleared out of office for a generation, once the electorate realises that they’ve been taken for marks by a band of clueless con artists.

The revelation of the acronyms came from an unlikely source: Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, formerly teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, and now for some reason at Bloomberg, brought forth what he might have thought was great news, and for those out there on the right unable to inhabit the real world, it probably was. But not elsewhere.

“[A] Truss backer said three acronyms would be fundamental to her administration: CTF, IEA and ERG”. CTF is Crosby Textor Fullbrook, domain of strategist Lynton Crosby, who helped Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson to be imposed on the unfortunate people of London. IEA is the Astroturf lobby group exposed as paid lobbyists for Big Tobacco. And ERG is the wacko Europhobic Tory fringe that is slowly destroying the wider party.

Crosby and his gang are good at attacking their clients’ opponents, but after years of Tory cluelessness, a country that has seen very little invested in most towns and cities since 2010, and the growing realisation that “Getting Brexit Done” has harmed the UK to the extent of making the country an international laughing stock, voters may no longer be prepared to listen.

By the time the next General Election comes round, an opposition offering their particular version of FDR’s New Deal, free of confected culture wars, picking fights with neighbouring countries, and lousy trade deals that have screwed over our farmers, but with a commitment to listen, and to help the 99%, will be difficult to demonise. They will also need to promote Ms Truss.

And whether it is Keir Starmer, or any other Labour leader, the constant spectacle of seeing a Prime Minister worked over at PMQs to the point of weekly humiliation will be there in the mind of swing voters. Sneering at human rights and going WOKE WOKE WOKE isn’t going to work.

Then there is the economic cluelessness that emanates from the IEA. For them, the market will provide: as they were taught by the likes of Milton Friedman, if there is not a market in any part of the economy, a market should be made, which will yield the optimum outcome. It isn’t doing across the energy and utility sectors, and it won’t. And the IEA will then be out of ideas.

All that they will be able to urge will be cuts: they want to cancel HS2, as they want to cancel any prospect of Crossrail 2 being built. All they can offer is a pie in the sky reheating of the discredited idea of turning railways into roads. The IEA way of satisfying demand for more freight paths on the West Coast Main Line is to increase the lorry weight limit and dump it all on the existing motorway network. Their answer to transport problems: MORE ROADS!

And then we come to the ERG, a party within a party, eating away at the Tory monolith from inside, under the leadership of Mark François (note cedilla under the c). Cooperate with the EU? TRAITORS! Das ist Streng Verboten! The idea of the Tories as a paternalistic broad church, a party that can take a pragmatic view and do what is best for Britain, is for them long gone.

Under the less than benign influence of the ERG, the Tories are rapidly becoming a UK version of the US Republican Party: cultists, driving out those of less than desirable purity, intolerant of cooperation, intolerant of opposition, intolerant of inconvenient rules and indeed laws - backed up by a media always prepared to argue that this show of intolerance is somehow righteous.

Behold the alleged leading lights of the Truss premiership: propagandists who won’t be able to gaslight the people when the shit really hits the fan, an economically illiterate lobby group which doesn’t have the solutions to the onrushing problems, and a Europhobic cult that has nothing to offer except more flag-waving, hatred of The Other, and maybe a little ritual incantation.

You thought Bozo was the worst PM ever? Liz wants you to hold her beer.

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