It was once said during the Wilson era that a week is a long time in politics. Given the tumultuous events of the last few days that is a gross exaggeration. That is partly why I have resisted putting my thoughts on paper for constituents up to now as it has been such a rapidly changing situation and I did not want to post something that would very soon be out of date.
On Thursday I pre-recorded The Last Word political programme for Meridian which usually goes out that evening after the late news. Within hours Liz Truss had resigned and everything I had discussed with my fellow MP panellists looked rather dated. As constituents know it has always been a priority for me to account to them for my actions and votes in Parliament and that is why I maintain active social media platforms and my website as well as my regular newsletters and videos. However, it was difficult knowing what to say when the situation has been shifting daily.
We have now reached a significant threshold with the announcement by the Prime Minister that she has resigned as Conservative Party Leader and will be handing over as PM just as soon as her successor has been decided, and so I think I can reliably write something meaningful. The Chairman of the 1922 Committee, Sir Graham Brady, which organises the election, has announced that nominations for a new Leader must be in by Monday 24th and if there are 2 competing candidates the membership of the Party will be given a vote with the result announced on Friday 28th. I welcome the highly speeded up succession procedure with as seamless transition as possible.
Firstly, let me apologise on behalf of the Government for the shambolic state of Government in recent weeks. Though as a backbencher I am not a member of Government it is ministers of my Party who have not acquitted themselves with any great glory in recent weeks and Government has been seriously knocked off course at a time when we need them to be most focussed on urgent national and international issues. It has been exasperating and embarrassing and we urgently need to get things back on track and I now think we have a serious prospect of doing that.
I did not vote for Liz Truss and have expressed serious concerns about her ability to step up to what is a hugely pressured and often lonely job as PM. However, she was elected by a clear majority of voting Conservative members and she deserved a chance to prove herself. Having been appointed just days before the death of our beloved Queen she was certainly thrown in at the deep end and I think acquitted herself well. We received a lot of justified criticism for what seemed like an interminable and often acrimonious leadership contest over the summer months at a time when all the cost-of-living crisis pressures on our constituents meant we needed a government without distractions more than ever. Maybe as a result of the fallout from that delay Liz Truss rushed into producing a comprehensive but ill-thought through ‘mini-budget’ within days of taking office with the new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng and that proved the undoing of her.
There were many good measures in that Budget, particularly around one of the most generous and comprehensive support packages for everyone hit by the international spike in energy prices. In addition, I believe that the tax burden is too high. We need to attract more people and businesses to invest in this country and pay a bigger haul of tax to pay for public services in the UK, and you need fair and competitive tax rates to achieve that. Under the Conservative Government the top 1% of taxpayers account for 30% of the personal tax take and our Exchequer benefits much more from taxing the highest earners at 45% or even 40% than their companies hanging on to that money and instead paying corporation tax at just 20%. We tax people and companies to provide revenue to spend on the public good – not to punish higher earners and drive them away to more competitive countries.
However, the tax cuts were not presented well, this was not the right time to pursue them, and the Chancellor failed to produce a detailed set of costings from the Office for Budget Responsibility (again only invented under a Conservative Government, Labour Governments had no equivalent) which needed to show that the sums added up. As such, several more controversial measures dominated the headlines and crowded out some of the more welcome aspects of the Budget and particularly the huge package of support for energy bills, the most generous and effective of any European country.
As a result, the financial markets took fright and interest rates moved up more than was necessary to counter international inflationary pressures. Financial markets hate surprises, and this was certainly not a welcome surprise for them and had not been sold well by the Chancellor and PM. The Opposition would like to have us believe that the economic pressures facing us are somehow ‘made in Downing Street’ and unique to the UK. It is worth pointing out that mortgage rates in the US at 6.2% are higher than they are in the UK; the US stockmarket has fallen more than in the UK; the Japanese Yen has fallen more against the Dollar than the Pound and the UK inflation rate at 10.1% is below the average of 10.9% for the EU, where some EU countries are suffering from inflation rates over 24%. The whole world is suffering on the back of post-Covid inflation and the huge spike in energy and food prices resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, it is important to admit that the handling of the Budget by the Government exacerbated the pressures facing the UK economy and markets took fright. As a result, most of the Chancellor’s Budget measures had to be reversed, and he paid for the mistakes with his job. I pay credit to my colleague Jeremy Hunt, who in the first 3 days of becoming Chancellor has managed to calm markets and is seen as an experienced and safe pair of hands.
Coincidentally, Jeremy was in my constituency in Southwick on Wednesday of last week, talking about his book and the future of the NHS with former Worthing Hospital boss Dame Marianne Griffith, as part of the successful Shoreham Wordfest festival. We spoke on the train about the Government’s woes on the way back, little knowing that 48 hours later Jeremy would have returned to the heart of Government and had an immediate crucial role in calming the markets.
Alas, things continued to unravel for the Prime Minister, and she did not handle the ensuing flak well. When the proverbial is ‘hitting the fan’ you need to confront it head-on and be seen to do so, yet on occasions the new Prime Minister was not nearly visible enough and it is rarely forgivable to send others into bat for you at the Despatch Box when the buck needs to stop with the PM. Again, I believe in the rush to make up for lost time over the leadership contest period the Government announced a number of policies that diverged from our manifesto commitments, and which had not been thought through properly.
One of those measures was on fracking where the new PM appeared to row back on our manifesto commitment not to go ahead with fracking. I strongly support the moratorium on fracking and have been very vociferous on this important subject not least because West Sussex as part of the ‘Jurassic Weald’ is a potential fracking area. Understandably it has been put forward as a solution to our current energy security pressures which is why the PM was tempted to look at it again, albeit with a lot of additional assurances attached.
I just do not believe those assurances were enough to convince many of my constituents that fracking is a viable or desirable option. We do not have the wide-open spaces miles away from residential areas as they do in the US where they have made it a success. The British Geological Survey raises serious questions about the amount of fracked gas or oil that could realistically be recovered, and we have not had the scientific evidence we were promised to guarantee its safety. As such I think fracking is a bit of a red-herring and we should not be raising it as an option again. There are other solutions for improving our energy security, including further increases to wind power as locally Rampion is doing, urgent investment in nuclear and even extending offshore gas drilling as a short-term option as a transition fuel to full renewable capability.
Never one to miss the opportunity to turn a drama into a politically opportunistic crisis the Labour Party used a routine Opposition Day debate on Wednesday to try and set a trap for the Government. They claimed that this was a simple vote to oppose fracking, in which case I would have had no problem expressing the same view in support. In fact, they were not interested in fracking at all but were disingenuously using it as a way of disrupting the Parliamentary Order Paper and hijacking the business from the Government.
It was just the same tactic used by Jeremy Corbyn during the chaotic Brexit debates in 2018 in cahoots with the now discredited Speaker John Bercow and which caused such mayhem. This was not something that I was going to vote for and of course Labour are now accusing me and other Conservative MPs vehemently opposed to fracking of having done a U-turn. No such thing has taken place, I remain opposed to fracking and Labour’s tactics have been pretty shoddy and parroted shamelessly by local Labour councillors who should and do know better.
To add insult some of them have been retweeting blatant lies questioning my support for free school meals when I went out on a limb previously to pressure the Government into extending the availability of free school meals during the pandemic. I guess that is an occupational hazard that I have become used to in my time as your MP, but it does not make it any less shameless.
However, this was a chaotic debate, and much of it was self-inflicted by the Government. The whips lost control, to add insult to injury the Home Secretary resigned, and the PM’s position just became completely untenable. It was very difficult to see how she could go on and stand any chance of regaining the credibility and authority that the Government desperately needs – especially at the moment.
To her credit however Liz Truss acknowledged that her position had become untenable and that she had lost the confidence of Parliamentary colleagues and many constituents. It is a personal tragedy for her, but she deserves great respect for the dignified manner of her resignation and for making the transition to a new PM as smooth as possible. It is far from ideal to have such a swift turnover of Prime Ministers in such a short space of time, but when there is a problem which can only be addressed by a change at the top it would be irresponsible not to act and on Thursday the Conservative Party has done that decisively.
So what happens now? Arrangements have been made for a hugely expedited leadership contest with a new PM in place within the week. Given the national and international challenges we face that is absolutely essential. Government needs to get back on track with strong leadership and direction and to get on with the policies and manifesto commitments which the people elected us to enact. I know most of my constituents are interested in how they are going to deal with the cost-of-living crisis, afford energy to get through the winter, get access to the NHS again after the huge impact of Covid and lockdowns and a myriad of other pressing issues rather than infighting and squabbling at Westminster. I completely agree and I am sorry that this has not seemed the priority in recent weeks.
I have therefore urged my colleagues to go even faster in selecting a new leader and avoid a contest altogether if possible. To my mind there are 4 important players who all need to join up and work together. They are: Rishi Sunak, the runner-up to Liz Truss in the last leadership contest; Penny Mordaunt who came third; Jeremy Hunt who has assured his place as a competent and confidence inspiring Chancellor; and heavyweight Defence Secretary Ben Wallace who has done such a sterling job over Ukraine and who must stay in that crucial job. I want these 4 ‘grown-ups’ to agree a new leader between them and then all take on key positions in a new Cabinet and be joined by additional talented grown-ups, regardless of who they might have supported for the top job I the past.
At the same time my Parliamentary colleagues need to park various egos, disregard the baggage often unfairly attached to certain candidates in the past and rally behind the new PM and his or her team. I would be very happy to support any one of these candidates and there really is no excuse why my colleagues cannot fall into line with that too. That may sound like wishful thinking, but as I see it that is the only way we can get things back on track and we owe that to all of our constituents.
Predictably there have been the knee-jerk calls for a general election from opposition parties who are ill-prepared for any election and whose alternative policies would scarcely fill the back of a fag packet at the moment. The economic pressures facing the UK and indeed other countries do not change simply because we have a change of Government, or worse still a hung parliament as we did in 2017 which would prolong the uncertainty and chaos indefinitely.
With a good deal of justification many opposition parties criticised the long-drawn-out leadership campaign over the summer and I certainly think we need to revisit the way we elect our leaders in the future. However, they are now calling for an election which would mean another 2 months of fighting between the parties at a time when we need strong leadership focussed on government and delivering urgent solutions to the country.
The truth is that we are barely halfway through the 5-year term for which this Government received a strong mandate back in December 2017. The Conservative Party has a strong majority in parliament able to get important legislation through, unlike 2017, and there are a lot of measures in our manifesto still to be delivered that constituents need us to deliver. So I will be ignoring the siren voices trying to lure the country on to the rocks of another protracted election period.
I will report further in my monthly newsletter next week as to how things have turned out and where I think we go from there and I hope at last that we will be moving in the right direction.
As always, I am very happy to take any questions from constituents and I shall be in Southwick Square this Saturday from 11am with one of my regular street surgeries. You all know how to get hold of me.
I hope this is helpful and apologies for the length of my diatribe but I thought I owed you a full explanation.
