Whither Dudley, Truss and accountability?

I spent most of last weekend trying to come to terms with the events unfolding at Westminster.

The Conservative parliamentary party, having rid itself of two Prime Ministers in less than two months, invented a way of selecting yet another, which, as it turned out, required no one to actually vote for the winner! Saves on all that pesky counting, doesn’t it!

As this was the most likely outcome after Boris Johnson withdrew from the process, it became urgently necessary to create a narrative that conferred legitimacy upon a future Rishi Sunak premiership.

The chosen Sunak-booster was the current Home Secretary, Grant Shapps.

His argument was that he and the other 356 Conservative MPs drew their mandate from the 2019 General Election, which returned them to Parliament.

He also pointed out that a Sunak administration would revert to the core of the manifesto upon which all Conservative candidates stood in that election.

So, the legitimacy runs from the manifesto, through the election of a majority that stood on that manifesto and then onto their chosen leader, who they are free to select and de-select as often as they wish.

And, as far as our wretchedly inadequate constitution goes, he’s quite right.

But that leaves him with a problem. It’s this:

If his argument establishes Sunak’s legitimacy as Prime Minister, then it throws into sharp focus that the brief Prime Ministership of Liz Truss was effectively a coup d’état.

Throughout the parliamentary and party phases of her election as leader of the Conservative Party, it was made abundantly clear that she would tear the 2019 Manifesto up and start again.

Under Shappsian theory, this would be unconstitutional.

Yet, 113 Tory MPs and later, 81,326 Conservative Party members voted to make her Prime Minister.

Assuming those MPs voted consistently in the membership ballot, I make that a grand total of 81,325 co-conspirators.

I am giving Liz Truss the benefit of my very considerable doubt and concluding she was sufficiently aware of what was going to have voted for herself!

I wonder what the Home Secretary, who is responsible for National Security, thinks should happen to all these conspirators?

Now, it is possible that all this chicanery was inspired by events closer to home.

Former RBWM council leader Simon

Dudley came to power after internally unseating the previous leader, David

Burbage post-2015 Borough elections.

Further, Cllr Andrew Johnson, the current leader of the council succeeded internally, after Mr Dudley’s still unexplained midnight flit in September 2019.

It’s heartening to know that, at least as regards a lack of openness and transparency and Geller-esque truth bending skills, our local Tories may have taught their senior brethren a thing or two.

That makes me very proud.

Cllr JOHN BALDWIN

Lib Dem, Belmont