From Redwood To Deadwood

John Redwood long ago pretty much recanted his vote in favour of the Iraq War, and he abstained both on Libya and on Syria, so there are worse. But floating him as a potential Chancellor of the Exchequer is Liz Truss's declaration that she does not expect to be the last Prime Minister in this Parliament. Gently or otherwise, such a Government would be moved on in a year or so.

Whatever "woke" is, then Truss is it. She is the Minister for Women and Equalities, a position that can be filled only by the "woke". Keir Starmer abolished the position of Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights, because to whom might he have offered it? So it is with the Minister for Women and Equalities. Tony Blair invented the job for Harriet Harman, who had it on the first day of his Premiership and on the last day of Gordon Brown's. What more is there to say?

Except that that has been Truss's Premiership apprenticeship, along with two years as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs while a Nicodemean disciple of Patrick Minford, who believes that Britain should have no agriculture. Truss will be the second Prime Minister to have held a portfolio that had been created purely in order to facilitate Harmanisation. They will both have been Conservatives, and Truss will enter 10 Downing Street straight from that job. She may even retain it.

But Truss will give the Conservative Party membership what it really wanted, tax cuts for the affluent elderly while funding their sweeties out of borrowing, leading to astronomical interest rates to the benefit of savings account holders who had paid off their mortgages decades earlier. Right in the midst of an preexisting cost of living crisis. Oh, yes, there will be another coup about a year after Truss had become Prime Minister. And she knows it.