We don’t need a Liz Truss sequel
The sight of Liz Truss popping back up on our screens again this week – like the axe murderer you thought was dead at the end of a horror film – was a handy reminder of just how dysfunctional UK politics has been.
Famously in office for less time than it took a lettuce to rot, she has re-emerged from the crypt peddling her latest book surprisingly not called, “How To Make Your Own Omnishambles”.
Her fans have handily forgotten the chaos she and her cabinet unleashed on households across the country in her mercifully short reign in office, chaos we are all still paying the price for today.
Interest rates, which had bumped around under two per cent for years, more than doubled in the space of a couple of months and remain at over five per cent, costing many households with mortgages hundreds of pounds extra each and every month.
Pension funds were forced to the brink of collapse, saved only because the Bank of England – the taxpayer – stepped in to save them.
Meanwhile, the pound fell to its lowest rate against the dollar since decimalisation in 1971.
Yes, the last time the UK economy reached such a nadir as Liz Truss took it, we were using shillings and guineas.
But despite the attempts to rewrite history, Truss was enthusiastically backed by the Tory rank-and-file and still enjoys the support of a large number of Tory MPs.
The fact that such a disastrous PM still carries weight shows how deep in the swamp UK politics has sunk.
And Sir Keir Starmer’s new model Labour party don’t seem interested in pulling it out.
Terrified of saying or doing anything that might frighten voters in marginal seats down south, they’ve retreated into their bunker, hoping no one will question them too much between now and polling day.
All the while, the Westminster cost-of-living crisis continues to wreak havoc on households across the country.
Both UK parties know their cupboard is bare – which is why they’ve tried to cover up their inadequacies through barely coherent attacks on the SNP.
Labour criticise the Scottish Government for implementing the Hate Crime Act – when they voted for it in parliament three years ago.
While the Tories try to fight a culture war on a law that they largely already enforce in England that only exposes how massively out of touch they are with what people really care about.
We will hear lots about opinion polls and culture war issues which both Tory and Labour think will play well with their target voters.
But I’m afraid we’ll hear very little about the massive challenges and problems that need fixed rapidly if we’re to help the economy grow and society progress.
Just this week, 1,300 manufacturing jobs were put at risk at Alstom’s trainbuilding plant in Derby thanks to a UK rail strategy that doesn’t exist.
We in Renfrewshire know exactly what a failed industrial strategy looks like – the scars on the ground at Linwood are still there to remind us.
It’s not just a short-term problem caused by the Tories having their hands on the chicken switch.
Neither UK party has an answer to the nearly 50 years of decline and rundown that the Thatcher years began – years that are now celebrated by the Labour front bench as “visionary”.
Just look at the privatised water companies down south – while thousands of tonnes of raw sewage get flushed into dozens of rivers every day, billions of pounds have been siphoned off to shareholders – but neither party in England seems to have anything to say or do that might bring that farce to an end.
There has to be a better way – and a better path for our country and our communities.
The UK is a busted flush – it’s time Scotland had the chance to get out of it while we can.