Our Winter of Destruction

Our Winter of Destruction I look at our PM, Liz Truss, and I think, how did this come about? What were the Tories thinking? They are self-destructing, I tell myself. I am happy to think that, but meanwhile, we have 18 months of this government. Liz Truss, bouncing on her high heels, travelling in search of a brain transplant. Before that, we had bungling Boris, empty as a finished beer-can. Now crunched up and binned, thank God. About him, the less said/ thought, the better. She took the cap off bankers’ bonuses (and because of that, the bottom off workers’ wages). She gave the green light to greedy fracking, never mind the creaking, tumbling local landscapes. What next? Jeremy -unt is back at the helm, more or less, and he is cruel as well as cunning. Put your crown jewels away and get ready for a harsh winter. The Tories are muttering and murmuring, but no one takes Liz on. What is her power-base? I wonder, what keeps her at No 10. ‘Who will rid us of this…?’ I think, as Liz minces in and minces out. We are in dire need of a government that cares about the people in this country who have to choose between heating and eating. We need a general election, now, not a year later. The advent of -unt does nothing to allay my fears of a subsistence winter. This man is the austerity chancellor. Any ideas, Keir??

Self Destruction? I have to be wary of wishful thinking. I listen to the sound bites coming out of Kamikazi and Busy- Lizzy and wonder what they are hoping to achieve with their loyalty to the notorious mini budget. Self-destructing, I say with glee. The Tory grandees murmur in some remote background, but do not come out of their rabbit holes. Lizzy just goes home and dyes her dress another colour overnight. As she bounces in to public view she looks radiantly smug. Even the Tories must have come across the word mortgage in connection with their loyal lumpen masses who vote them into power. Another 500 pounds or thereabouts on their monthly payment is a minor irritation. Rees- Mogg will instruct them to work harder, in between switching their heating off and inventing meals that are mainly bread and vegetable soup. Maybe more children will become eligible for school meals. Rashford, where are you? Schools will supply old uniforms to more children. Mothers will have nervous breakdowns and become thinner with denying themselves enough food. Fathers will look for second jobs and get progressively angrier. Are we a third world country now? Labour can sit back and enjoy the side-show. Tories are doing it all on their own.

Self Destruction? I have to be wary of wishful thinking. I listen to the sound bites coming out of Kamikazi and Busy- Lizzy and wonder what they are hoping to achieve with their loyalty to the notorious mini budget. Self-destructing, I say with glee. The Tory grandees murmur in some remote background, but do not come out of their rabbit holes. Lizzy just goes home and dyes her dress another colour overnight. As she bounces in to public view she looks radiantly smug. Even the Tories must have come across the word mortgage in connection with their loyal lumpen masses who vote them into power. Another 500 pounds or thereabouts on their monthly payment is a minor irritation. Rees- Mogg will instruct them to work harder, in between switching their heating off and inventing meals that are mainly bread and vegetable soup. Maybe more children will become eligible for school meals. Rashford, where are you? Schools will supply old uniforms to more children. Mothers will have nervous breakdowns and become thinner with denying themselves enough food. Fathers will look for second jobs and get progressively angrier. Are we a third world country now? Labour can sit back and enjoy the side-show. Tories are doing it all on their own.

Chaos There's the mini budget about which the less said, thought about, the better. Give the billionaires a break, for heaven’s sake. Trussliz is just behaving according to her class-imprint. She has no empathy or intelligence to understand what the average person in the street has to negotiate because of her wanton decisions. The mortgage payments go up – so what? And Kwatank is whipping through like the hurricane, Ian. His gaze is dead; as far as he is concerned, the hullabaloo about his MINI is just the usual clatter. Like all else, it will pass. The hoi-polloi will have something else to grumble about next week. Except mortgage payments come by every month… The poor man’s balancing act is one I am familiar with. I once lived on a monthly take-home of 92 pounds. I remember how I used to check the electric metre obsessively. The line on it went round on and on relentlessly. The amazing part is that there have been no calls within the Tories to get rid of either Truss or Kwarteng. They are self-destructing fast. The old guard, Hague, Hunt et al are just watching. With glee, like me?

I Despair!

I DESPAIR! Our P M. Liz Truss. How did this come about? What are the Tories thinking about? They are self-destructing, I tell myself. I am happy to think that, but meanwhile, we have two years of this government. Liz Truss, bouncing on her high heels, travelling in search of a brain transplant. Before that, we had bungling Boris, empty as a finished beer-can. Now crunched up and binned, thank God. About him, the less said/ thought, the better. Our Liz is at the U N this week and I am cringing to imagine her dealing with all those experienced apparatchiks. They’ll have her for porridge if she is not careful; And, not-so-Cleverly holding her hand is not going to cut it. Seventeen days and she has taken the cap off bankers’ bonuses (and because of that, the bottom off workers’ wages). She has given the green light to greedy fracking, never mind the creaking, tumbling local landscapes. What next? Today, I don’t recognise our normal political landscape. The Tories smell defeat in 2024 and they are armed with a wrecking ball. Ed Milliband was at his best at Westminster this week, but I doubt the Tories care. So gear up for a nasty eighteen months. Hopefully the bankers will handover their bonuses to the struggling poor and pay for school uniforms.

The Queen and I As early as age thirteen, I had a thing about the two princesses, Elizabeth, and Margaret. Somebody gave me a coffee table book about the princesses, and I spent hours looking at them. In black and white of course, this was 1950. At College, I read Russell and Joad and Laski and all persons in between, and became staunchly left-wing. And there I have stayed, Left, but peaceable Left, not Kerala communist blood-letting Left. In the fifties there was a lot of murder and mayhem in North Malabar. When, eventually, I ended up in the U K in the seventies, I knew I was anti-monarchy. I had lived through the unedifying reign of George VIth, when many Indians, including my father, had ended up in prison for demanding independence for India. But perversely, I admired and loved Queen Elizabeth, the second. She was only nine years older than me. Her poise, elegance, devotion to duty and wisdom enchanted me. What a woman! Living in Britain has only reinforced my view. The grace with which she has managed the many conundrums in her life – Charles and Diana’s chaotic marriage, the anti-monarchy upsurges now and then, Andrew’s unsavoury shenanigans, to name a few. But there she is, consistently dignified, fair and gracious. This country is impoverished without her; we are, at the moment, lost without her.

Our Aspiring Leaders

I am looking at the two candidates who aspire to be our Prime Minister on the fifth of September, and I think – Is this all the Tory Party has to offer the Country? Two wannabes with nothing to distinguish them from the lumpen masses inside the Party, and the mindless acolytes outside. I am from Kerala, where even the barely literate household staff read the newspapers every day, the-beedi rollers have one employed at full wage just to read the paper to them while they roll the tobacco into the poor man’s smokes, and the far Left is more often in power than not. No Country deserves the entitled apparatchik, or the frozen person. The only bright spot is that the two leaders will both make most people so mad that they will vote for Labour in 2024. Meanwhile, how do we suffer this empty, pompous lot? What we need, of course, is a people’s uprising. This is not going to happen. Our version of this is called a polite No-Confidence vote. Look at the time and effort it took to shed Johnson. The two contenders talk non-stop about tax; I get the impression that this is what exercises their tiny little brains. NHS? Truss wants to sack nurses, I hear. BP raising the prices for the common man on fuel while accumulating vast profits? Sunak is all in favour. No way out for any of us.