Habit and Repute

As Liz Truss attempts a comeback, and as Kwasi Kwarteng bows out once and for all, ponder that if the mini-Budget had been a Labour one, then we would still have been hearing about it in 50 years' time, pretty much the latest that I could possibly be alive. If all the frauds and fiddles arising out of Boris Johnson's and Rishi Sunak's approach to Covid-19 had been attempted under Labour and to the financial benefit of, say, the trade unions, then there would have been a military coup.

Yet Labour tailors its economic policy out of fear of Sunak, the man who lost to Truss, the woman who lost to a lettuce. She had previously been noted only for a speech about pork markets and cheese despite being a disciple of Professor Patrick Minford, who wants Britain to have no agriculture. Truss and Minford ought to be made to defend that position on the stump in South West Norfolk. Sunak lost to Truss.

This Conservative Government is not an aberration. Although the two recessions in the early 1970s were essentially a single occurrence with a brief interlude, six of the eight since the War have at least started under the Conservatives, and six have been entirely under them. There was no recession on the day of the 2010 General Election.

To say that the Conservative Party has "lost its reputation for economic competence" is to assume that it ever had one. If it has, then it has "lost" it numerous times that I can remember. It has certainly never deserved to have it. Such a reputation seems to be one of those things which Westminster Village journalists think about the country at large. Labour politicians then believe it because the press pack says it, not a failing that is confined to one party, and they duly run scared.

But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would 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.