Waiting for the new ‘Boss’ …

 

 

Hands up all who watched ‘that’ acceptance performance yesterday, which gave us a ‘new’ PM? Because I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t when I read today’s MSM. The print editions this morning have only this one subject (link). It’s as if La Truss had won a GE, but then, we recall that the same MSM have treated this inner-Tory-Party election as if the whole nation was voting. 

The MSM gossip mongers have now returned with a vengeance, insinuating that they know already who will get which office in the Truss cabinet – and MizL iz hasn’t even seen the Queen yet. She’ll be at Balmoral today and tomorrow she’ll face her first PMQ. 

For the record, she gained 57% of the Tory members’ vote, Sunak got 43%. That’s less than the previous two PMs achieved when they replaced their predecessors. The verdict of the speccie editors from yesterday evening’s email newsletter is pretty damaging:

“Truss built her reputation in part through her Instagram account, which featured the ambitious minister enjoying various trips and meetings. The next few months, though, aren’t going to be enjoyable – or very Instagrammable.” (Speccie email news)

How low have we sunk as a Nation when Instagram ‘popularity’ translates into political success, into being handed the keys to No 10. As for her acceptance speech, here are the relevant quotes from Quentin Letts’s sketch for The Times:

“The acceptance remarks were short and constipated. […] Our next prime minister announced that having been elected as a Conservative she intended to govern as a Conservative. A revolutionary concept. She mentioned lower taxes, personal freedom, energy costs and the health service. “We will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver,” she quacked. Someone buy that woman a Unigate milk float.” (link, paywalled)

Nice one! More to the point is Letts’ description of the audience because, on purpose or not, he sketched the incestuous circus of the Westminster denizens performing their theatre for us plebs:

“Most journalists had been placed towards the back from where they radiated competitive cynicism but a few television correspondents mixed it with the parliamentarians. When you see ministers and TV showboaters beside each other, they are indistinguishable. Same professional smiles. Same tans. Same class. This is now worse than it was before the referendum. […] Compared to this circus of weirdos, the Conservative Party members who attended the month of hustings seemed pretty sane.” (link, paywalled)

Thank you, Quentin! Sadly, it’s this bunch of weirdos which are going to govern us, no difference if they sit in offices in Whitehall or MSM newsrooms. For example, currently the DT has the best ‘sources’, the best access to gossip and spin. This morning they’re therefore able to report that certain Tory backbenchers have already made demands:

“Allies of Penny Mordaunt are urging Liz Truss to appoint her former leadership rival as deputy prime minister, it can be revealed. Senior Conservative figures say the move would be “popular” with members and MPs and could help bring the fractured party back together.” (paywalled link)

Un-effing-believable! Still, Truss did claim she wants to form a government ‘of all the (Tory) talents’. When one looks at the alleged people who will be given the top posts one might be permitted to have some doubts (my emphasis):

“Many of the biggest jobs are understood to have been decided, with none of the four great offices of state set to be occupied by a white male. In the most diverse top team ever, Kwasi Kwarteng is expected to become Chancellor with James Cleverly earmarked for foreign secretary. Suella Braverman is set to be home secretary.” (paywalled link)

That’s a bunch of ‘talent’, that is! If we can believe this gossip, Truss seems to want to hand poisoned chalices to her perceived enemies:

“Ms Truss is expected to hand other former leadership rivals Cabinet roles. Nadhim Zahawi, who is currently at the Treasury, will take charge of the Cabinet Office as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugendhat have been tipped to become education secretary and security minister attending Cabinet respectively.” (paywalled link)

One person who will not be in the cabinet is Frosty (my emphasis):

“Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, will not be in Liz Truss’s first Cabinet after turning down two roles that were offered to him, […] The ex-diplomat was sounded out about the role of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, once occupied by Michael Gove, but rejected it because Ms Truss wants the job to be far more narrowly focused than in Mr Gove’s time. Ms Truss’s team also raised the possibility of making Lord Frost the Leader of the House of Lords, but he told them he would be the wrong person for the job because it should go to someone who has been a peer for much longer than his two years. Although he indicated that he would be happy to serve in a Truss Cabinet if offered a job to which he felt he was suited, there has been no contact between the two sides in the past week.” (paywalled link)

And that after his early, glowing support for Truss … but then, Frosty is a ‘stale white male’ and Truss and her ‘team’ clearly believes that skin pigmentation is more important than expertise. Some Tory backbenchers -anonymous, of course – had this to say:

“MPs who supported Mr Sunak, who is not expected to have a role in the new Cabinet, are already expressing concern that she appears to be giving all the top jobs to her own loyalists. “It’s all very well Liz standing up there saying I want to use the talent from all the party,” said one minister who backed the former chancellor’s campaign. At the moment she seems to think the talent only comes from those who supported her. She’s very weak in her parliamentary support and to so brazenly ignore the supporters of her rival, she’s already got enough problems.” (paywalled link)

While it’s nice of her to reward her allies with lucrative cabinet jobs I’m afraid we’ve got one step closer to the times where the Whitehall mandarins will pull the strings. In a whiff of T.May’s regime, we read that Truss:

“intends to quickly appoint a new principal private secretary, while Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, is not expected to stay on. Truss is thought to favour James Bowler, permanent secretary at the Department for International Trade, for the role.” (link, paywalled)

If she brings Mr Bowler to the cabinet then I feel doubly justified in my verdict that she will have a Mark Sedwill Mk II at her side – a mandarin who made her look very good as Trade Sec, having domesticating her successfully.

I leave you with the glad news that she’ll not rip out that golden wallpaper installed by Carrie: that’ll save some money (link, paywalled)! Johnson meanwhile is said to move into ‘a borrowed house in central London’ where he’ll apparently write his Downing Street memoirs by Christmas (paywalled link). Well, the advances on that book should see him and Carrie through the winter. I doubt it’ll be a ‘cracking read’ because, I believe, even PMs aren’t allowed to spill cabinet secrets unless a certain time of grace has passed. 

We’re in for bruising times. The first cries of ‘rally behind Truss to save the Tory Party’ are already being heard. The question is: will she be able to last to the GE in 2024? Or will she be forced into a snap election, perhaps by a vote of No Confidence triggered by the misery of energy prices not fixed while there’s a cold snap and the Sacred Cow is overwhelmed yet again by winter illnesses?

Until PMQ on Wednesday, “we” can ‘celebrate’ a PM manufactured by mandarins and the MSM, with a cabinet without ‘white men’ in the top offices of state. Let’s hope that Truss won’t be able to swamp the nation with ‘instagrammable’ moments because surely that’s against Cabinet rulz.

Meanwhile, since we dunno what Truss will ‘deliver, deliver, deliver’, we better look to ‘deliver’ to ourselves what we will need to get through the coming times, stuff which will soon become too expensive or ‘out of stock’. I’m afraid the mess we’re in will only get worse. Sigh.