Trussed Up No More?

Liz Truss fears the loss of her seat. She may be known only for a speech about pork markets and cheese, but she was and is a disciple of Professor Patrick Minford, who wants Britain to have no agriculture, as would be the “free” market in action. Truss and Minford ought to be made to defend that position on the stump in South West Norfolk.

How different history might have been if Telegraph Blogs had published my last copy, which was based on a charming telephone interview with Sir Jeremy Bagge, 7th Baronet, and Mullah Omar of the Turnip Taliban. This time, James Bagge is an Independent candidate, backed by figures such as David Gauke and Dominic Grieve. Those who have disliked Truss in South West Norfolk have done so far longer than anyone else, and now the country has caught up.

Yet it was Labour that was in an albeit distant second place there last time. The mere suggestion of the mini-Budget crashed the economy, but Labour pretended to oppose only one measure in it, the one that Truss had not included in her prospectus to Conservative Party members, while actively supporting all of the others. Look what those proposals did even without being enacted. Labour would enact them.

The same Labour Party is preparing to install Alan Milburn as Chair of NHS England. In 1997, Milburn, Tony Blair and Paul Corrigan brought the concept of NHS privatisation from the outer fringes of the thinktank circuit to the heart of government. Since then, it has been the policy of all three parties except under Jeremy Corbyn, and of most Labour MPs and all Labour Party staffers continuously. In 1997, Labour’s pledge card had promised to abolish the NHS internal market, and the final week of its campaign had been a countdown of days to save the NHS. Those were barefaced lies, and the opposite of the truth. Here we are again. Except that Wes Streeting is perfectly open about his bought and paid for intentions. He seeks and accepts such income streams because he agrees with what they stand for.

Back when Milburn was running a Newcastle Trotskyist bookshop called Days of Hope, known to its clientele as “Haze of Dope”, it was obviously costing far more than it could possibly have been making, but it clearly suited someone’s purposes to have a distraction from the Communist Party bookshop down the road. Yet in 1979, Corrigan was a parliamentary candidate for the Communist Party. Think on.