I believe it was in the first week of August that Gordon Brown intervened, begging the Govt to hold an emergency budget or Cobra meeting or something. An emergency meeting. As in, immediate, serious, this could get, err, deathy; and the same week the Tories responded by telling him to go fuck himself (I’m paraphrasing). Brown, who mobilised the western response to the 2008 global financial crash. Brown, who stepped forward in March 2020 begging the Govt to take Covid-19 seriously. Brown, who… you get the idea. That Gordon Brown. At every geo-political juncture he’s been like a respected village elder, warning us about shit and being consistently proven right. You’d think Team Johnson might give him a fucking minute. But if Brown is the village elder, Johnson is the teenage vandal. Johnson and his chancellor were both on holiday that week. Their bit-part stand-ins said they’d "take no lessons from Gordon Brown". And so as Sunak and Truss continued their fight over who hates Woke and renewable energy the most - the country slid further into an economic sinkhole. The pound - once worth almost twice the value of a US Dollar, is now at near parity. Which means for all the “Blighty!” and bluster, the markets aren't employing such baseless optimism. Presumably they’ve seen our inflation, hampered labour force, Debt-to-GDP and shrinking economy and concluded we're not the stable democracy with a solid economic outlook we once were. Pfffff fucking experts. Why can’t they just belieeeeeeve a bit more? And with cost of living, as every week goes by, nothing is announced, nothing is implemented, no one steps forward. In 2008, you got the sense that this was a once in a century event and that the smartest guys in the room were working day and night to try to fix it. With Covid, we at least had the theatre of briefings, the PM or Health Sec front and centre proving updates.. But with the imminent upending of Pubs, Care Homes, Cafes, Barbers, Dentists, Hotels/Resorts, you name it; there are no briefings. There are no blocked out Cobra sessions in the PM's diary. Families are soon to be dragged kicking and screaming into poverty, people who already merely existed in poverty, are despairing what they'll do when their bill lands in October. There is a feeling amongst us that there is a total absence in Downing St. The Boss is constantly on holiday. The silent partner (/the STEM newspapers) don't give a shit. It is the episode of Peep Show when JLB Credit goes under. The staff know everything's fucked so they run around the office doing whatever they want; they trash photocopiers, they push vending machines down the staircase; *OR* they just... stand, confused, in the carpark. [and no the irony doesn't escape me that the thing I'm using the metaphor of JLB's collapse to describe, could itself end up sending a company like JLB under. The world's first reciprocal, cause-and-effect metaphor. You're welcome. Cost of Living be damned: can you believe this blog is free?] There is a total vacuum of leadership. No one at the wheel. At least when an exhausted lorry driver nods off on the dashboard you have someone to blame when it ploughs through a school bus. With this, there is literally nobody in that seat. No one. Who can you blame when no one's in charge? PMs on hollybobs. Chancellors working from holiday. Leadership candidates going on about dancing police.. Still, no one is taking this seriously. You'd have a higher problem-solving success rate taking Ketamine on the Krypton Factor. Meanwhile we, the public, are Marty and Doc Brown frantically trying to get the locomotive to do its magic before it drags us all crashing into the ravine (there is of course a modicum of solace to be taken in the possibility that Boris Johnson is the one boss whose absence could yield greater productivity). Some take comfort in Liz Truss’s impending premiership. “She must know how bad things are! She’ll sort it on day one! There must be a plan! IT'S ALL PART OF HER PLAN!” they cry. Great. More deadline'less, vapid, wishful thinking. Truss's plan is the new Coming Soon! Brexit's Big Wins For Britain. Now, is it sunlit uplands still? Or is that too close to solar? The leadership hustings and the campaigns around them have shown precisely what the priorities are for the new Tory leader. As one LBC journo put it last week: “There wasn’t one question about the cost of living crisis, while the biggest claps and cheers went to one about Woke Police”. We are living in a country so distracted, so intoxicated from the chem-trails of Brexit that grey-haired men at hustings events - many of whom will freeze to death by Christmas - are asking the Final Two candidates what they plan to do about the dangers of... Woke. Against the backdrop of a Conservative Party (ostensibly) unplugging their radiators. The electorate warm to the idea that Truss must have a plan. She must. There simply must be one. They wouldn’t just let huge chunks of the economy collapse, would they? Urrrrr. In the wise words of that Democrat tiktokker: Bitch, where have you been? We’re talking about the same group of people who set fire to Banking, Car Manufacturers and Professional Services to save... fishing. FISHING! Now look, I’m not knocking anyone's salmonny, coddy enterprise. You do you. Make your money. Enjoy your work. But in the context of "golden ages for Britain" and "letting the lion roar!", it seems weird to sacrifice Financial Services (worth £170bn/year) for fishing (0.5% of that). We're talking about a political class for whom nothing is sacred. Vows are broken. Lies are told. Fuck business. And when water companies can’t get hold of European chemicals with which to dispose of their sewage safely, and they ask to do it in the sea you go fishing in? Well then fuck fishing too, obviously. Guy's that's Brexit, thank you for playing. We’re talking about professional failures who would lambast a Money Saving Expert for his advice; who are already wheeling out the “we can’t wrap our arms around everyone” and “a lot of people are going to have a very difficult winter” rhetoric. I'll level with you. I don't think there is a plan, just as there wasn’t with Brexit. Just as with the Pandemic the planseemed to consist mostly of "How do we funnel money from Matt into the Millionaires?". Welcome to the nadir, the crosshairs of the modern, Tory Party. A lack of empathy (kettles and catastrophe), a lack of experience (#moderatesOut), a lack of gravitas and leadership (Truss, Sunak); and all of it coloured further by donor culture and stupidity. We look at our bills, we read about care homes shuttering, we hear about schools closing, and we ask "Where is it? Where is the fucking plan!?!" And they say "Oh, it's coming. It's just around the corner... it's just... we haven't thought of a way to make money out of this yet."
