COVID cost the country at least £440billion. The energy price guarantee could cost £150billion. The money markets didn’t bat an eyelid.
The Chancellor announces tax cuts of £43billion. The money markets and the IMF go into meltdown. The Chancellor is sacked and the Prime Minister may not be far behind.
Why do the bankers and the IMF want to get Truss out before she has even got her feet under the table? Could it be that the bankers want one of their own, Rishi Sunak, as PM and are seeking every opportunity to stick the knife in?
Sunak led every vote in the MPs’ ballots and his supporters think that the Tory Party members made the wrong choice in backing Truss by a large margin.
What the PM is proposed in the mini-Budget was almost all part of her pitch to party members to get the leadership. It won’t be lost on members that a minority of Tory MPs are doing their utmost to stop Truss implementing the policies she won the leadership race on.
History is repeating itself. In 2001, Ken Clarke was the choice of Conservative MPs to succeed William Hague as party leader. But for the first time members were given a choice between the last two in the race, and Iain Duncan Smith defeated Clarke by 61 per cent to 39.
Many Tory MPs never accepted that outcome; they did everything they could to undermine Duncan Smith and in 2003 he was forced out. Michael Howard ’emerged’ as the only candidate and so party members were denied a say. Again in 2016, Theresa May was the only candidate after Andrea Leadsom withdrew and again the party members had no say in who would be their new leader.
Now Sunak and his banker friends seem to be doing everything possible to remove Liz Truss as PM before she has had a chance to implement the policies the party members voted for over the policies of Sunak.
Those Tory MPs involved in this ‘coup in plain sight’ want Sunak to be the only candidate if Truss is forced to step down, so that once again the party members won’t have a say in who should be their leader. They will do everything they can to get their own way and ignore the declared wishes of party members.
The members need to flex their muscles and start de-selecting some of these know-all MPs who have never accepted that members should have a say in the running of the party. Some of these ‘big-head’ Tory MPs need putting back in their box. It would only have to happen to a few to bring the other rebels back into line.
The sad fact is that the Tories won an 80-seat majority in 2019, but it has never been used to introduce measures the Tory members want.
Too many Tory MPs think they know better than the Party members.
Their comeuppance is long overdue.
