“Aspiration nation”, Liz Truss promises, as if her party could wish away this most severe economic crisis. That leaves Keir Starmer and David Lammy to talk up “Make Brexit work”, on their current two-day visit to Berlin meeting chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss how a Labour government could cooperate with the EU – and how social democrats can win.īack in Toryland, bring on the pious abstract nouns. Make Brexit Worse is their shared mantra. “Penny will always fight for Brexit and always has,” swear Mordaunt’s team. The empty theology of who stood where in the Brexit referendum six long and painful years ago is still the golden key to party votes, so candidates commit to breaking the EU treaty and tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol regardless of consequences. Yes, it’s the economy, stupid – but on display here we have John Stuart Mill’s “stupid party”. Yesterday Newsnight joined a focus group in Rother Valley, South Yorkshire, that showed voters overwhelmingly anxious about prices, bills and the crippling cost of living. Proving they are the right stuff to their own clan is all that matters. Their articles of faith are far removed from the common ground where general elections are fought and won. These candidates inhabit another planet to ordinary voters. Remember how he was once mobbed by MPs and party members grabbing selfies wherever he went? Remember how they cleaved to him, justifying his lies, dishonesty, crony contracts and corrupt favouritism? They’re all in it together, running from the crime scene as if this shame they brought upon their party and parliament never happened. None of the leadership candidates dares to mention the unmentionable – the disgrace of a prime minister they selected, knowing all there was to know about his character. ![]() ![]() Here is a “conservative” party that just crashed the country, threatened democratic norms, broke rules and defied the law now behaving as if nothing has happened. If Penny Mordaunt seems to steal the scene, her advantage over the rest is that she is the least well known, leaving punters free to invest in her whatever they may hope for. Its candidates inhabit a twilight zone where true belief is all that matters. This leadership race is a strangely unreal world of phantasms. O n with the Mad Hatter’s tea party, as they all move up a place and Suella Braverman falls out.
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