Arise sir de pfeiffel.
https://twitter.com/AnimarchyYT/status/1795642275634241640
This made me laugh more than it should have
5 Likes
Sounds like someone is getting leaned on.
Which one?
Theyâre all pay links anyway.
Truss being eviscerated looked interestingâŚ
The truss one.
There is said to be a fear among some Tory MPs that voters are so disgusted by the combined incompetence and corruption of Liz Truss and Boris Johnsonâs administrations, the party will be out of power for a decade. If voters read Sir Anthony Seldonâs forensic and eloquent evisceration of Trussâs chaotic and catastrophic 49 days in No 10, it could be two decades.
The blunt subtitle of Truss at 10, the new book by Seldon, Britainâs leading political biographer â âHow Not to Be Prime Ministerâ â says it all. Its opening sentence encapsulates the entire Truss saga: âShe came, she saw, she crashed.â
Seldon says that when he set about writing his eighth biography of modern British prime ministers, people teased him: âI bet it will be a short one!â The 365 pages, equal to more than seven pages for each day she spent in No 10, are packed with new details of how Trussâs policies unravelled spectacularly. They contain candid on-the-record interviews with many of those involved, including Truss herself and her partner in crime, chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. The book provides fresh insights into the personal tensions, âcharacter flawsâ, and behind-the-scenes clashes that contributed to her downfall.
Seldonâs biographies of prime ministers usually focus on the art of statecraft, and analyse policies, tactics and strategy over their years in office. He faced a different task with Truss. She only produced one policy, and we all know what happened: she slashed taxes without any thought of balancing the books, collapsed the economy, and had to resign. Seldon unpicks this, hour by excruciating hour. But it is the deeply unsettling picture the author paints of Trussâs personal failings, and how they influenced her actions in office, that I found most compelling.
Seldon is not a writer who is given to exaggeration or hyperbole. Yet his book is littered with words such as âmadâ, âunhingedâ, âbonkersâ, âbarmyâ, ârageâ and âparanoiaâ in its descriptions of Trussâs time in No 10.
You might imagine that a prime minister, on being informed by a senior minister or adviser that a proposed policy is likely to go badly wrong, would have to hand a suitable response. According to Seldon, the stock reply of Truss to anyone who questioned her was: âF*** it, weâre going for it,â or âPress ahead, I donât want to hear any f***ing objections.â It was as crude, immature and dangerous as that.
Ministers and advisers talk of her being driven by âtotal self-beliefâ â though you are left with the clear impression that they thought there was little to back up that belief. Having known Truss through my work as a political reporter at Westminster, I am familiar with her âtotal self-beliefâ along with her zeal for headline-grabbing wheezes. On one occasion, she told me she planned to campaign to restore the âThree Rsâ in schools. I asked her: âWhat is seven times eight?â She blinked, then blurted out: â54.â
Anyone can make a mistake. But given the above, combined with her âpopulist and even recklessâ nature, as Seldon terms it, it did not fill me with confidence when she became, on her appointment as prime minister, first lord of the Treasury â a role in which one is required to perform more complex calculations than seven times eight.
Her many political reincarnations, from anti-monarchist to royalist, Lib Dem to Tory, Remainer to Brexiteer, made me feel queasy. Seldonâs book confirms the notion that, for all her enthusiasm and intelligence, she is strangely rootless, liable to embrace impetuously any passing fad that might help her up the greasy pole.
Searching for an explanation for her downfall, Seldon says Truss ânever mastered her inner demonsâ. He identifies these as a lethal cocktail, comprising a weak temperament and blind faith in her convictions compounded by poor judgement and a desire to avenge those she perceived to sneer at her because of her state school background.
He describes her reaction when an adviser suggested she say in a speech that she âknows how it feels to have your potential dismissed by those who think they know betterâ. An ecstatic Truss exclaimed: âI love it! Itâs a massive âFuck you.â Itâs great. Itâs kind of deeply true. Itâs basically a class issue as well. Thatâs the other reason people call me âstupidâ. âMadâ. Public schoolboys!â
Most prime ministers are capable of making tough decisions without taking out the strains of high office on those around them, says Seldon. Truss showed no such grace. âEven senior cabinet ministers were treated with contempt and humiliated in public. She regularly told her personal staff to âshut upâ or simply blanked them. Her team would regularly feel she was talking behind their backs and playing one off against the other.â
Drilling into Trussâs âinner demonsâ, Seldon says one cabinet minister told him: âSheâs hard work to be with. She doesnât emote.â A second minister observed: âNo one used the word âautismâ. But itâs what we were thinking⌠her reluctance to engage⌠her unpredictability when the s*** hits the fan.â
Hard though it is to believe, Kwarteng emerges from Seldonâs book with even less credit than Truss. Seldon acknowledges that, for all her faults, she had more âmoral seriousnessâ than her predecessor, Johnson. But a prime minister as unpredictable as Truss needed a strong chancellor. Kwarteng, her close friend and âideological soulmateâ, was the opposite.
Seldon says Kwarteng feared, even before he became chancellor, that Truss was âlosing her perspectiveâ â and he did not agree with her on key economic matters. She only made him chancellor, he says, because he agreed to acquiesce to her. Kwarteng feebly tells Seldon: âI formed the view that the chancellor should defer to the prime minister.â
When he belatedly tried to stand up to her, fearing â rightly, as events showed â that her Budget was a massive error, she told him to go ahead, and he gave in without a wordâs objection. Seldonâs assessment is damning: âIt is hard to think of any chancellor in decades who would meekly have done as he was told by No 10, reversing what he knew to be right.â When Truss ruthlessly sacked Kwarteng in a forlorn attempt to save her own skin, he seemed to be in a daze. He tells Seldon: âWW2 veterans in my constituency used to tell me that, if youâre going to die, keep calm to the end.â
Having admitted that he was ready to do exactly as she ordered, Kwarteng has the temerity to say that he now regrets it and that he âshould have put my foot down harderâ. He adds: âSome prime ministers were brittle. But Liz took it to a whole new level. She simply wasnât fit for the job.â He may be unaware of the following, but Seldon does not appear to be: they were both unfit for their jobs
The author pins the blame for Trussâs rise to power on Johnson. She only became prime minister in 2022 because he backed her, says Seldon, and he did so merely to spite her rival Rishi Sunak, whom he blamed â falsely, as Seldon states â for his own downfall.
Yet shameless Johnsonâs public support for Truss was fake all along, says Seldon. âWhen asked by MPs who they should support, he would say, with varying degrees of conviction, âLiz Truss.â But in private he remained disparaging of her.â Johnson cynically âpeddled the [Sunak] betrayal theory far and wide, knowing it would damage Sunak and benefit Trussâ.
Nor does Seldon spare the blushes of Conservative-supporting newspapers like the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, which helped Truss to win power and promoted her kamikaze budget. The Mail praised its âseismic boldness and courageâ, he notes. Its support for her was so slavish that it was about to launch a campaign to defend the calamitous decision to scrap the 45p tax rate at the very moment when she was about to ditch that policy.
Seldon writes: âKwarteng was instructed to speak to the [Daily Mail] editor Ted Verity to say âYou must do as you think fit, but if you run with that story, youâre going to look rather silly because the policy is going to change.ââ Craven Kwasi did as he was told â and the paper took his advice.
It is hard to disagree with Seldonâs conclusion that Truss and Johnson are chiefly responsible for the Toriesâ recent landslide election defeat. âHer vanity and neediness and willingness to trample over others was of Johnsonian proportions. The partyâs longstanding reputation for economic competence and cool-headed pragmatism had been severely tested since 2016, but the final thread was snapped by Truss. The British state suffered from her trashing of its institutions and personnel, hard on the heels of Johnsonâs systematic undermining of them.â
The disturbing air of unreality surrounding Trussâs persona and politics is reflected in Seldonâs account of her demeanour when she knew her fate was sealed. âRather admirably, if a little eccentric, she retained her optimism right to the very end. Seldom has a prime minister been happier after they knew the game was up. âShe radiated positivity in her final days, as if she was almost happy as if she was almost happy it was over,â said an aide.â
9 Likes
The Tories must have been badly stuck for candidatesâŚ
The Grenfell Fire inquiry report is out today. An absolute shitshow.
1 Like
Terrifying how quickly it can take hold.
The animal is a fearsome thing.
These reports are always a statement of the bleedinâ obvious, what everybody already knew from the get go. Letâs see does anybody face actual justice. My guess is no.
Meanwhile Kingspan will continue to be advertised any time Cavan play or thereâs a match in Breffni Park. A terrible look for the GAA to be associated with this company.
If itâs true the tabloids will sure spill the sausages on it tomorrow.
I was wondering where Dele Alli had got to. Heâll be a great member of the House Of Lords.