Analysis
— It has been a short but very eventful journey to the top for a man who has only been in parliament since 2015.
Analysis
— It has been a short but very eventful journey to the top for a man who has only been in parliament since 2015.
Stats
— Rishi Sunak is the UK’s fifth Prime Minister since the Brexit vote of 2016, and the third of 2022, following Liz Truss’s exceptionally short time in Downing Street. But is he only the best of a bad bunch?
Analysis
— Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, ran into trouble even before taking office.
OPINION
— Party still comes before country and constituents and democracy to the Conservatives. The Tories would do anything now, including giving Boris Johnson another go at being PM, to avoid annihilation in a General Election.
UK Politics
— After years of testing the limits of British democracy, the government finally got a taste of its own medicine when Labour used a parliamentary mechanism to lay Tory divisions bare.
UK Politics
— When government whips turned a vote on fracking into a vote of confidence in the government, confusion ensued. Eventually, Liz Truss had no choice but to resign.
COMMENT
— No matter whether a system is democratic or undemocratic, a bad leader’s period in office could leave millions of broken lives in its wake.
Long-Read
— Ironically, as well as being deeply depressing, the most hopeful thing about this government is how utterly hopeless at governing it is proving itself to be.
Analysis
— If you don’t like the idea of being held accountable and having to answer for your actions then a leadership role is probably not for you. The top office is not a playground for ideological experiment.
COMMENT
— Say the name “Liz Truss” now and the two words convey a world of meaning. Misgovernance, missteps, miserliness towards the poorest and most vulnerable. But most importantly, one woman’s name has come to signify the best of British robotic libertarianism.
COMMENT
— Britain wouldn’t be Britain if it didn’t routinely send up people in authority, especially if those people say silly things that also happen to be mean.
COMMENT
— Liz Truss is out of date. She is half a century late. The UK economy and the world faced different, less complex crosswinds then.
Long-Read
— Professor Chris Grey’s analysis on how the Brexiters’ budget, which they say is crucial to Brexit, exposes their total incompetence (not a cunning plan), so that the crisis is a verdict on Brexit itself.
Environment
— Environmental groups have criticised the government’s approach to nature – but what is this approach and why is it concerning?
COMMENT
— Former PM Gordon Brown’s budget analysis sums up Liz Truss’s government plans perfectly. Wouldn’t it be good to be governed by grown-ups again?
OPINION
— It’s all going so terribly well, isn’t it? Liz Truss is living down to expectations that she would prove to be the next worst Prime Minister in living memory and is doing so in spectacular style.
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