Opinion: A vote of no confidence from me

Usually, there is a period of good will associated with the arrival of a new leader. The British public is fair-minded and willing to give any new premier a chance to make their case.

Liz Truss has brought this period to an abrupt end. I believe it’s the most sudden stop on a new administration in modern history.

Her mistakes are both in substance and style: she first decided that the best way to stimulate growth was a heavy-handed giveaway to those at the top of the economic ladder.

However, there is a limit to how much “the few” can spend: how many more trips to the grocery store can they make? How many more appliances can they buy? There is a natural human limit to the economic contribution the few can make. Hence a lot of the time, the ultrawealthy sit on a pile of equities. A tax cut just adds to the pile. The money rarely reaches the small businesses which constitute most employers in this country.

Kwasi Kwarteng’s inability or unwillingness to state how the giveaway would be financed (apart from by borrowing more) spooked the markets. The Bank of England had to stage an emergency intervention to prop up pension funds.

Up until the night of Sunday the 2nd of October, Truss was continuing to double down on her strategy, even though the

consequences to the wider economy were becoming clear: there has been a steep decline in the number of mortgage products available, higher interest rates are on the way with all the economic pain that implies.

Her own party was up in arms: Michael Gove and Grant Shapps went out of their way to denounce her strategy.

Faced with such an overwhelming tacit vote of no confidence, she finally caved in. However, it took an enormous amount of pressure to make her do so: she couldn’t spot the problem in the first place. It didn’t occur to her that she might be in error, rather, she mainly attributed mistakes to the plan’s “presentation”.

She was not particularly repentant. One can only wonder how she may respond to further emergencies: will she be

ahead of the curve, or will she be so late that her own MPs will have to sound the alarm before something happens?

Conservative-led governments have run this country for over 12 years. We are on our fourth Prime Minister in that space of time. In Peterborough we have had Conservative control for over two decades. At what point do the voters realise that this simply isn’t working? Do we really need to continue living this way? Can we not hope for and aspire to

better?

We can do better than this. Labour has been steadily building its policy set and setting forth its ideas. We do not need to be mired in the present mess; we can go forward. It does require looking with the world as it is and contending with what is real. It requires facing into our problems with optimism and realism.

Only then will we get out of the mess we are in.

I believe only a General Election will deliver this change: on present form, this may happen sooner rather than later.