Suella In The Cellar

Suella Braverman has been reappointed only in order to sack her again, as the break with the Right once and for all. The answer to its every economic policy proposal is already "Liz Truss", and the answer to its every other policy proposal will very soon be "Suella Braverman".

After Brexit, the Right has no issue that has mass appeal; indeed, even most Conservative voters find its core economic agenda as abhorrent as the City and the money markets do. Most Conservative voters also seriously regard voting any other way at a General Election, if ever, as a treasonable act, and in England as simply un-English. It's over.

Or, at any rate, it is on that side of the House. Labour opportunistically pretended to oppose the abolition of the 45p rate of income tax, the only mini-Budget measure than had not been in Truss's prospectus to her party's membership, but it supported everything else that even Jeremy Hunt, of all people, has felt the need to reverse.

Had the mini-Budget ever been put to a Commons Division, then Labour's whipped abstention would have saved Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng from Hunt, Rishi Sunak, and all the rest of them. Labour is going into the next General Election as the only party that still thought that Trussonomics was broadly, and often very specifically, a good idea.

Keir Starmer versus Truss could have resulted in a Labour overall majority, but Starmer versus Sunak will result in a hung Parliament. To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power.

Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.