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stack https paullinford substack com twitter x https x com paulhtfp bluesky https bsky app profile paulhtfp bsky social holdthefrontpage https www holdthefrontpage co uk author paul linford facebook https www facebook com paul linford1 linkedin https www linkedin com in paullinford posted by paul linford at 9 34 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday october 03 2022 wanted a boring pm i ve now lived through 13 prime ministers and in my former incarnation as a political journalist even interviewed a few of them most historians would rate harold wilson margaret thatcher and tony blair as the most significant pms of the last 60 years but the ones i have the most respect for are three of the more under rated figures to occupy 10 downing street james callaghan john major and gordon brown all three faced economic crises of varying degrees with some success in turning around those situations around before leaving office all three radiated a sense of decency commitment to public service and respect for institutions and all three eventually lost elections to superficially more exciting figures who irrespective of their other achievements all left the country more divided than the one they inherited thatcher by the nature of her industrial and social policies blair by the political catastrophe of the iraq war which indelibly stained the reputation of an otherwise great pm and david cameron by the equally catastrophic brexit referendum which led directly to the political and economic chaos the uk faces today so when this country finally gets a chance to cast its verdict on the current shitshow that s masquerading as a government i don t want an exciting pm i want one who is compassionate honest and humane and one who will seek to re unite this country around a belief in the common good sir keir starmer is not a thatcher or a blair he s not going to pull up any trees in no 10 and he may well turn out to be a transitional one term pm who then hands the torch on to one of the younger brighter stars in the labour firmament such as bridget phillipson or wes streeting but neither is he someone who is going to trash our economy our institutions our civil service and our international reputation in the way liz truss and boris johnson have done and for now that s more than good enough for me posted by paul linford at 9 04 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest wednesday september 07 2022 johnson to truss some reflections i have been reserving judgment on the new prime minister until we knew the shape of her cabinet and specifically whether she intended to emphasise party unity and recognise talent by building an inclusive team or whether she merely intended to prioritise loyalty by rewarding her own supporters well now we know and even though both nadine dorries and priti patel have thankfully gone we have probably the most right wing cabinet the country has seen for 100 years or more i have watched the long drawn out tragi comedy of boris johnson s downfall and the equally interminable farce of the subsequent leadership election process with a growing sense of despair for the future of our country here are a few reflections on the transition from johnson to liz truss and why i believe we may have just achieved something that many thought impossible electing an even worse prime minister than the one we have just got rid of 1 a few months back post partygate but pre pincher some good friends asked me how on earth boris johnson was still in office i responded by saying that many tory mps had not yet moved against him for fear that they could end up with someone even worse if the mps had been in a position to control the choice of his successor the letters to sir graham brady would have gone in much sooner but there was always a risk that once the decision went to the party membership they would put in someone even less palatable to the mps than johnson at that time the obvious successor and most popular choice among the mps was rishi sunak but as i explained to my friends there was never the remotest chance that the party membership would choose him as leader i ll leave it to your imagination to work out why that was the case tory mps should have worked this out and ensured that penny mordaunt got onto the ballot paper as the stop truss candidate but the momentum was behind rishi at that stage and the support of the extreme right wing european research group of whom more below was enough to see truss through 2 all of the above happened because of what now has to be seen as the spectacularly misguided and arguably unconstitutional decision made by william hague in 2001 to extend the franchise for electing party leaders from mps to the party membership copying a decision made by labour in 1980 because of this we have now ended up with truss as prime minister with the support of less than a third of her mps in the same way as we ended up with jeremy corbyn as leader of the labour party with the support of only a small rump of his mps some of whom only put him on the ballot paper out of a misguided desire to be inclusive it is time both parties recognised that we live in a parliamentary democracy rather than a presidency and that a party leader always needs to be able to command the support of a majority of his or her backbenchers particularly when a party is in government and electing not just a leader but a prime minister the past few weeks have done the conservative party absolutely no favours with decisions affecting the whole country being made by a tiny and very unrepresentative section of the electorate rather than the mps who we supposedly elect to parliament to make those decisions for us this is not democracy in any meaningful sense 3 boris johnson showed what a political operator he continues to be with a barnstorming speech from the steps of no 10 this morning in contrast with ms truss s truly dreadful acceptance speech the previous day as usual though there was the complete abdication of responsibility for his own downfall and attempt to blame his colleagues for changing the rules half way through er they didn t when really he only has himself and his own character flaws to blame for the premature conclusion to his premiership the great irony is that the public would probably have forgiven him a few lockdown gatherings if he had been honest aout the fact they had taken place instead he threw his press secretary allegra stratton under the bus and pretended they had not happened although it was the chris pincher affair that got him in the end his premiership was doomed from this point proving once again the old watergate truism it s not the crime it s the cover up that gets you 4 athough truss is a terrible public speaker look up her 2014 party conference speech on cheese imports and pork markets on youtube if you don t believe me that need not necessarily be an impediment to being a great prime minister think clement attlee her speech outside number 10 this afternoon was a considerable improvement on yesterday s and at least had the merit of being more honest than johnson s admittedly both fairly low bars but it s the content of what she says rather than her wooden style of delivery that really matters sure she demonstrated that addressing the energy crisis and sorting out emergency care in the nhs remains at or near the top of her agenda although if today s briefings are anything to go by the measures set to be announced to freeze energy bills remain somewhat in a state of flux but talking about getting britain working again and tackling the issues that are holding britain back merely implies that she is inheriting a country that isn t working and is being held back presumably by the government of which she has been a part for the last eight years 5 and so to that cabinet by not reaching out to sunak or his supporters in fact by sacking every single one of them who previously served in cabinet ms truss has made her task of uniting the party after a particularly divisive leadership election that much harder while the appointment of kwasi kwarteng as chancellor was expected given their long personal history i m really not sure what she sees in new foreign secretary james cleverly who nice chap though he is has always struck me as an example of reverse nominative determinism as was often the case with tony blair s cabinets there are also some square pegs in round holes why make kemi badenoch international trade secretary when both the education and culture briefs were up for grabs why move anne marie trevelyan to transport when penny mordaunt was available badenoch and mordaunt were both leadership rivals so maybe truss didn t want them in jobs where they might have started to feel too comfortable if so it s another example of putting party management considerations before the good of the country 6 but the appointment i am most seriously concerned about and the one which most clearly signals the direction the government intends to go in is that of suella braverman as home secretary this is an appointment which genuinely fills me with dread to the point of actually making me feel slightly physically sick it is clear from her previous comments that braverman will try to take britain out of the european court of human rights in order to implement the absurd and immoral policy of deporting economic migrants and asylum seekers to rwanda undoing an historic british post war achievement that was credited in part to sir winston churchill braverman probably owes her preferment to some sort of deal between truss and the european research group to back her rather than mordaunt in the final ballot of mps which resulted in truss and sunak being the two names which went to the party membership see above the erg have been a consistently malign and divisive influence on british politics over the past six years and if truss is in hoc to them in any way it does not bode well for her premiership 7 it follows from all of the above that i believe truss faces an uphill struggle even to survive the next two years without facing a vote of confidence from her own mps let alone get the party into a position from which it can win a general election in 2024 all of which begs the question can boris come back you don t have to re read his leaving speech too many times to see the clues the references to cincinnatus a roman politician who did indeed return to his plough but was also later recalled to power and the analogy of a rocket booster splashing down in a remote corner of the pacific for me this has all the hallmarks of what used to be known in political circles as a retreat to colombey les deux eglises after the quiet french village that general de gaulle retired to after the war while awaiting the call to return as president of france which he eventually did 13 years later any hope of a comeback would require the commons privileges committee to clear him of deliberately misleading the house over partygate but if it does so it could be game on and since boris johnson has already brought down three prime ministers including himself a fourth would seem no more than par for the course posted by paul linford at 9 35 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest older posts home subscribe to posts atom about me paul linford belper derbyshire united kingdom political writer website editor and former lobby journalist view my complete profile search this blog best of the blogosphere alastair campbell 529 antisemitism polarisation and how the king outplayed trump conservativehome newslinks for sunday 22nd september 2013 iain dale the consequences of thursday s elections labourlist exclusive usdaw general secretary writes to mps over fears of weakened workers protections left foot forward local elections 2026 which councils could progressives win liberal democrat voice and 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