A Tale Of Two Prime Ministers

Once again, the Tories have been using their conference to confirm that they talk well, but lie badly. Lying about “15 minute neighbourhoods”, lying about a non-existent meat tax, lying about householders having to sort rubbish into seven bins, and a Prime Minister lying about not making a decision on the HS2 project, when he had already made that decision.

Rishi Sunak - just winging it

Lying about facts, claiming to be the party of facts, while inventing stories that are mainly, or wholly, untrue. The result should shame them, and they should be called out by every media outlet covering their activities, but when Suella Braverman, for some reason made Home Secretary, blusters “We cannot let British cities go the way of San Francisco or Seattle”, we get crickets.

Very few hacks make the connection made by Ian Fraser: “Suella Braverman slams San Francisco and Seattle. Is it because they respectively have GDP/capita of $290,000 and $119,000 while London’s is only $68,000?" Very few challenge the claim that binning another part of HS2 will free up lots of money for other projects, but Phase 2 (the part binned) will release little next year.

Rishi Sunak gives the appearance of echoing his predecessor but one, the now disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, in lying to get through the day’s news cycle. One wonders how he would cope with almost two hours of questioning, first by two journalists, and then by a whole audience worth of the public. He wouldn’t.

But one European Prime Minister just did that last Monday. For one hour and 53 minutes, a duration I had to double check, so used was I to UK Prime Ministers struggling to manage a coherent ten or fifteen minutes with one interviewer. CNN Portugal did a “Town Hall” event (yes, USA-isms here too) with António Costa, who has been PM of the country since 2015.

So he has one advantage over Sunak, having occupied The Hot Seat since the election that former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage lied about so shamelessly. But one difference Costa faces is that Portugal does not have the compliant right-wing press of the UK, no oligarch dominated media, no Murdoch, no Rothermere, no f-f-f-Dacre.

António Costa - less drama, more detail

Another advantage, though, is that Costa is across the detail. UK PMs were once thus: Mrs T was ferociously well-read and briefed. Tony Blair was good on detail; Gordon Brown was better. It’s only with the likes of Bozo that the country has had leaders just winging it, and lying to cover the cracks. So what kinds of subjects did the CNN interviewers and the audience cover?

Social Care, with an increase in the number of “social hospitalisations” (a well known problem in the UK for some time now) was acknowledged. There was to be a rise in the minimum wage. Housing shortages were an inevitable area for questioning: especially in Lisbon, high rents are forcing people out of the centre. One reason they’re building more on the South Side of the river.

And the new airport. Lisbon apparently has Europe’s busiest single runway airport. The issue has been on the boil for decades, but faded after the financial crisis and then the Covid-19 pandemic. Tourism, travel and climate change all have to be addressed, and balanced. Costa concluded that there was one inevitable fact about a new airport: there will never be consensus.

He did, though, decline to hint at where a new airport might be sited. He also declined to say what changes might be coming down the line on personal taxation. But every question was addressed, whoever pitched it. Sunak, meanwhile, invents a meaningless “the last 30 years” strawman, and his Home Secretary has a senior Tory expelled from conference for dissent.

The two PMs do have one thing in common: their Indian heritage. But one thing they do not is tenure: Costa has a majority in the Assembly, and barring any more upheavals like the TAP inquiry, there will not need to be another election until 2026. Sunak, barring a miracle, will be thrown out of office next year, along with his cabinet of grotesques, liars and freeloaders.

Thus the two Prime Ministers: one talking facts, the other just pretending.

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