Tough Talk

The tiny, invisible Rishi Sunak, apparently absent through most of his premiership so far, finally appeared through a halo of cloud, adorned by a bright light and lo’ he spaketh to the Nation: “ Yea, I shall bring forth five gifts, that thou shalt judge me competent in my magnificence.” And in said magnificence intoned that he would halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce debt, cut hospital waiting lists and turn back the boats. He must think we are stupid.

If anything in that list was within the gift of government, any government, then governments would have made it happen long ago. The boats are not stopping any time before Rishi loses the next election, unless he somehow manages to send Albanians ‘back’ to Rwanda. The French won’t take them, the Albanians are glad to be rid of them and only the UK has a ruling class determined to fuck over its own people through weakness and indecision and a hand-wringing servitude to the false god of ‘universal human rights’.

The NHS has been ‘in crisis’ since the day it was inaugurated and although many predict its immediate decline and subsequent reform, nobody at the sharp end – patient or practitioner – seriously believes anybody can fix the fifth largest employer in the world. The NHS is too big, too clumsy and too inefficient for anybody to even begin to grasp that nettle, and I’m confident it will lurch from death throes to death throes for another century without any improvement in whatever the hell it thinks its divine purpose is.

Good luck also, Rishi Rich with your reduction of national debt. That ship has sailed and taken with it every last vestige of national pride and capability. Our economy is propped up by unproductive non-jobs, designed to suck the vitality out of every last drop of enterprise, and a young population who yearn only to be ‘reality stars’ or ‘influencers’. Until those genies are re-bottled there isn’t a chance in hell that we will ever be out of hoc to some supranational entity or another. Borrow and spend and borrow some more and hire some clever accountants to show that, look, the emperor really is fully clothed!

Servicing that endless debt will make economic growth almost pointless. The country will resemble most of its inhabitants, living from one pay-day to the next and handing over most of its pay-packet in rent. No savings, no pensions, no welfare, no hope. And although lower inflation might ease things a bit, it really isn’t within his gift; it is a thing that is expected to happen regardless of whatever meddling the administration indulges in.

No, I’m afraid that I have as much faith in Sunak bringing about an economic and social sea change as I had in Jeremy Corbyn stamping out Labour antisemitism or Keir Starmer discovering charisma… or Emily Thornberry embracing humility. At least he has appeared to say nothing for now about net-zero. As somebody else has already observed “Net zero is like giving up cigarettes by getting your kids to smoke them for you.” If only we had a half-decent numeracy policy the government could do the maths on that. But don’t hold your breath; it’s all just talk.