“It is as if my soul were tied to the decrepit body of a dying animal,” wrote the poet W.B Yeats in Sailing to Byzantium. The same happens with that of the British conservatives, who have acute symptoms of morbidity and cry out for extreme unction, protagonists of a ghostly and macabre dance like those of those tribes from remote lands who drank concoctions and entered a trance to ask for the protection of the gods. But the gods are not paying any attention to them.
The Tories, when things go wrong – and now they couldn’t be worse – don’t mess around when it comes to getting their leaders out of the way. They have fewer bloodshed complexes than Shakespearean heroes. But if in the case of Margaret Thatcher it was an assassination, in the case of Theresa May it was a reckless homicide and in the case of Boris Johnson it was a murder, in the case of Liz Truss it would be euthanasia or assisted suicide without the need to travel to Swiss. Because the prime minister is so dying that she doesn’t seem to want to fight very much.
His new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt is the de facto prime minister, and he behaves like one. In just seventy-two hours, he has dismantled the entire government economic plan, and has already warned that he will go even further, that he will raise taxes and cut public spending (including social subsidies) to try to close the hole of 80,000 million euros that there is in the state accounts. It is what the markets demand.
This was made clear on Saturday in an interview with the BBC with which he finished demolishing what was left of the libertarian utopia of Truss and his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng. If the government had already reversed the reduction of corporate tax and the 45% tax rate, it has now postponed the reduction of the basic one point (from 20% to 19%) for at least a year, and has opened the doors to an extraordinary surcharge on the profits of energy companies. Nothing but ashes remain of the Prime Minister’s original budget and the promises she made to the Conservative base to get elected. His role has been reduced to that of an honorary chairman of a board of directors, with Jeremy Hunt as CEO, in collusion with Andrew Bailey, the director of the Bank of England (who always said that the objective is not to stimulate growth, but to raise prices). interest rates and make money more expensive to control inflation).
The Tories are aware that winning the next election would be a miracle after the show they are putting on. The deputies with scant majorities are already looking for work in the private sector, but for the rest there is a big difference between a massacre and a competitive defeat that would allow them to save their seats and continue earning. That is why many conspire to have Truss guillotined as soon as possible and replace her with Sunak, or Penny Mordaunt, or Sajid Javid, or whatever figure unites the Party. But it is not easy, because of the many factions, with diverse interests and philosophies, from the radical eurosceptics to the libertarians, the representatives of the city and the countryside, of London and the rich south or the poor north of England, the extreme rightists and the moderate.
Several dozen rebels, organized by the Sunak clan, met this Sunday in search of a way to eliminate Truss before he does even more damage. The internal rules of the Conservative Party establish that its leadership cannot be questioned for at least a year, but they are flexible rules. And if there are enough signatures calling for her head, and a delegation of “wise men (and women)” comes to 10 Downing Street to inform her that her time has come, the impression is that the prime minister would not offer too much resistance. .
Poverty, corruption and reactionary nationalism (exemplified in ideas such as sending asylum seekers to Rwanda) have long undermined the image of the UK, where disposable income is 6% less than in neighboring Ireland, and its growth in the last two years is lower than that of all the countries of the European Union except Greece and Cyprus.
Liz Truss was not satisfied with taking a rabbit out of the hat -which was already difficult-, but an elephant, and she has not succeeded. She has been guilty of inordinate arrogance (the main fault of the English), and her rocket has exploded upon contact with the atmosphere of real politics and economics. The collapse of her program is the equivalent of sterling’s exit from the European monetary system in 1992, which laid the foundation for Blair’s arrival and thirteen years of Labor hegemony.
Since Brexit, the Tories have been betting on converts and repentant sinners to lead, like the religions that need them to prove that miracles exist. Boris Johnson was an opportunist, but he had charisma. Theresa May was useless, but she was empathetic and honest. Both, in hindsight, look like geniuses next to Liz Trus.
