Trussed up and hunted down

A video clip released by Buckingham Palace this week showed King Charles greeting the PM when she arrived for their weekly briefing.

“Dear oh dear,” he was heard to say which wasn’t perhaps what she wanted to hear and definitely not on camera to be shared with the world.

I may be in a small minority but having argued only a few days ago that classical liberals must stick with Liz Truss and her close friend, the cigar chomping health secretary Thérèse Coffey, I’m not going to join the lynch mob but I hope “dear oh dear” doesn’t prove to her epitaph, although it could be a lot worse.

For me the worst moment of her press conference today wasn’t the announcement of another u-turn (on corporation tax this time) but confirmation that the new Chancellor is Jeremy Hunt.

Three months ago, when asked which of the eight candidates for the Tory leadership I favoured, I flippantly said ‘Anyone but Hunt’ and meant it.

I was delighted therefore when he was the first candidate to be eliminated or, as I wrote here, ‘dispatched into political oblivion’.

Three months later he’s back, not just in government but in the Treasury, next door to Number Ten, his ultimate goal.

Personally I don’t get it. OK, he brings more experience to the table but do we really want a return to the vanilla policies of the Cameron/May years?

At least David Cameron and George Osborne were a good match politically and personally.

I could understand it if Truss and Hunt had similar political beliefs but I’m pretty sure they don’t so it looks, on paper, like a marriage made in hell.

For example, on the evidence of his stint at the Department of Health Hunt is a copper bottomed interventionist, the opposite (or so we are led to believe) of Truss. On smoking, for example:

Jeremy Hunt backs Labour bid to ban smoking in cars with children (The Times, February 2, 2014)

Jeremy Hunt wants a 'smoke-free' Britain: Health Secretary praised by anti-smoking groups (Independent, October 23, 2014).

It was Hunt too who launched a consultation on standardised packaging of tobacco and although he was later criticised for delaying its introduction he was effectively forced to because of the weight of opposition that included a street petition organised by Forest that attracted over 250,000 signature opposing the measure.

The fact that Hunt was in favour of plain packaging was never in doubt, as a subsequent Twitter interchange with former Labour Health Secretary Andy Burnham (now mayor of Greater Manchester) seemed to prove.

Many will argue that if Hunt gets inflation under control and revives the economy nothing else matters (and they may be right) but the prospect of him using his new position to further his Number 10 ambitions doesn’t fill me with joy.

Starmer or Hunt? Either way the middle class war on our lifestyles will go into overdrive.

Btw, I listened to Five Live this afternoon. Granted, Truss has brought a lot of this on herself but the BBC didn’t even attempt to be impartial.

Amid all the critical comments they eventually found a 19-year-old Truss ‘supporter’ who allegedly voted for her in the leadership election although his first choice, he said, was Penny Mordaunt.

Naturally he savaged both Truss and the state of the country in apocalyptic terms before demanding, when prompted, that she resign.

I’m not sure what the point of the interview was apart from confirming that even Tory party members who voted for Truss are deserting her, which may or may not be true.

At 19 he’s entitled to his opinion of course but to put current events in perspective surely we needed to hear from one or two people who lived through similar economic and political crises in the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties.

Unfortunately we’re living in the Twitter age and he who shouts loudest is given airtime regardless of the insight they bring to the table.

Anyway, I’m attending the Battle of Ideas at Church House in Westminster tomorrow which is guaranteed to be far more civil, literate and liberal.

If you’re going too do say hello.

Update: First meeting, selected at random from a choice of eight that all started at 10.15, and the first speaker absolutely eviscerates Jeremy Hunt, highlighting his notorious flip-flopping on Covid restrictions.

Sadly there are many more MPs (Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem) just like him.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

It always amazes me how desperate the Conservatives are to lose the next election.

Anyone but Hunt could help them keep the votes over the red wall but now they've blown it.

Worse still, Truss comes across as weak having clearly caved in to the liberal elite.

Shame just when it seemed they might become a party worth sticking with.