Rishi Sunak

David Cameron
The present Government gives us the fifth PM in 12 years. However, 12 years in power seem to have exhausted both the Conservatives and public alike. Rather than growing stronger over time they have become weaker. But it’s not just the Conservatives as all political parties represented in Parliament have followed the Conservatives into weakness. It goes further in that all public servants have joined in this demise.

You may have noticed that we have another PM as the last one resigned. The new one is called Rishi Sunak, has been in post 6 weeks and we'll take a look at him later. You may have also noticed that things are not going well for us here in the UK and more on that later too. The outgoing PM Liz Truss had to sack her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. But what did he do? Well he did what she told him to do! He had been in post for 38 days and the turn-around in his fortunes and by implication those of Truss, who served for 49 days, are remarkable.

Theresa May
So how did all this start? Brexit is not to blame for where we find ourselves and Michel Barnier, the EU’s Chief Brexit negotiator, has gone on record to say so. Even so there is an opportunity for those people who will never accept the Brexit result to gather themselves up for a fight.

New blue tree!
In the first budget by Chancellor Rishi Sunak we saw a new species of tree. A new tree? Yes we did! Gone is the Labour party money tree the mythical giver of low hanging fruit for all and in its place stood the mighty Blue tree. This is a cross between a hardy traditional Oak and some fancy hybrid that just keeps on giving. But then days later from Sunak came the measures to deal with Covid-19. Here was not so much a money tree but a forest. Confused? You are not alone! The first question must be was the Government caught out by the spread of C-19 and if so why? At the moment we are so busy dealing with the virus the lessons will come later. Thinking about budgets as recently as Nov 2019 the Labour party was taken to task for its money tree promises to spend, spend, spend. But that is what we now see and very late in this Covid-19 crisis we also see questions being asked about this spending. Can you really out-spend a pandemic? A spending spree is such a tempting thing for a government to do. But if it goes wrong then it opens the door for your political opponents. So to stop this political to-and-fro Tony Blair gave us fiscal rules. The idea was to lift the financial management of the nation away from political pressure. What could go wrong? Well plenty, it was as most things with Blair an act, a delusion.