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UK: PM Truss Looses Another Senior Minister and Aide [1]

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Date: 2022-10-19

Poor Prime Minister Liz Truss’s woes continue [the “poor” is not an expression of sympathy!] To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to loose one senior minister is unfortunate, to loose two in a week looks like sheer carelessness.

First after crashing the UK economy with his “mini-budget”, Chancellor (finance secretary) was thrown under the bus on October 14.

Mr Kwarteng was summoned home early from a trip to the United States today to be told he was being removed. The news means that Mr Kwarteng is the second the second shortest-serving UK chancellor on record. The shortest was Iain Macleod, who died of a heart attack 30 days after taking the job in 1970.

Liz Truss announced his replacement, Jeremy Hunt. and virtually all of the neo-liberal economic proposals were reversed. Then on Wednesday October 19, Home Secretary Suella Baverman thankfully resigned over a technical breach of the Ministerial Code (of conduct), sharing an official document with a backbench Tory MP using a private email account. In her resignation letter she indicated all was not to her liking in Truss’s cabinet, especially as Hunt is a relative moderate. It also contained a criticism of Truss herself.

The business of government relies upon people accepting responsibility for their mistakes. Pretending we haven't made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can't see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious polities. I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility: I resign. It is obvious to every one that we are going through a tumultuous time. I have concerns about the direction of this government. Not only have we broken key pledges that were promised to our voters, but I have had serious concerns about this Government's commitment to honouring manifesto commitments, such as reducing overall migration numbers and stopping illegal migration, particularly the dangerous small boats crossings.

“Stopping dangerous small boats crossings (sic)” is code for “pick em up and send them to Uganda where they can make their application for UK asylum”. She was replaced by another white, more old school Tory, Grant Schapps. Things went down from there. Truss lost one of her senior advisors to suspension over allegations that he was responsible for negative briefings against former Chancellor Sajid Javid. The action then moved to the House of Commons.

After a fairly torrid performance by Truss at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Commons were due to vote on a motion to end the ban on fracking. This was being presented as a “matter of confidence” which meant Conservatives had to support it or “lose the Whip” and have to sit as independent MPs. Loss of the vote could precipitate a General Election. Almost as the vote was called, Truss reversed that although this does not seem to have got through to the Chief Whip who was allleged to have physically encouraged an MP into the voting lobby. At one point there was speculation that she and her deputy would resign but Truss seems to have calmed that one over. In the end the vote went the Government way so fracking can resume and no doubt the odd earthquake will add to the excitement to the rides at the Blackpool amusement park. There were certainly cracks forming in the Tory Party with open calls for her resignation from MPs with others putting her on notice.

The events of the day are best summed up by the sign-off from the BBC’s live web coverage, which has more details of the events.

We're pausing our live page after a day that saw Prime Minister Liz Truss' government teetering on the brink following a key Cabinet resignation and chaotic scenes in the Commons.

One of their last posts was to report on Thursday morning’s newspapers.

Suella Braverman's resignation leads most of Thursday's dailies. The Guardian says the government appeared to be at risk of collapse on Wednesday night as the former home secretary attacked the PM in her resignation letter. The Daily Telegraph says Braverman's resignation rocked the 11government "on a day of chaos" as some Tory plotters believe Liz Truss will be toppled within days. Many of the papers referred to the chaos in the government as Truss clung to power, with the Financial Times saying many Tory MPs said the government was dying.

The shortest serving Prime Minister ever was George Canning who died in office on August 8. 1827 after 119 days. In modern times, Sir Alex Douglas-Hume served a year and a day. Liz Truss “kissed hands” on September 6 this year. January 3, 2023 is 119 days after.

Normally the Conservative leadership elections would mean Truss would be in no risk of beating either record. Normally Leaders cannot be challenged until a year after their previous election (safe for Douglas-Hume’s record). The election rules provide for a “knockout” series of votes among MPs who put 2 candidates forward for the whole (170k) membership of the party to vote on. The rules were changed to not allow one of these to drop out to “maintain party unity”. Both rules can be changed. It is quite likely that MPs will not trust the party members to get it right and change the rules. This could include the 1 year rule or simply getting the “men in grey suits” to tell Truss her time is up.

Former PM from the 1960s is often misquoted as saying “a week is a long time in politics”. It’s been quite a long week for Liz Truss but perhaps she should pay more attention to the words of the Liberal politician Joseph Chamberlain in 1886 (same family but not the Appeasement one): ‘In politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight.’

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/19/2130027/-UK-PM-Truss-Looses-Another-Senior-Minister-and-Aide

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