What a graceless coup

Boris Johnson was brought down by a cabal of vengeful Remainers, anti-Tory hacks and cabinet backstabbers, all as feeble of mind and character as they are strong on perfidy.

Now his party has embarked on a meandering course at the end of which a generation of Labour governance beckons. Will the real Tory in the lot please stand up?

They all remain seated. The declared candidates for Number 10 don’t even know what conservatism means. They aren’t about statesmanship, ideas and principles. Their whole being is circumscribed by naked powerlust.

Just look at Rishi Sunak. He registered his ready4rishi website in December, which at least shows some aptitude for foresight. And his sleek campaign video hit the waves just hours after Johnson announced his manically upbeat resignation.

Take it from a former adman – that video had to take at least a week to conceive, produce and edit. It was in the can, ready to roll, just as Rishi was honing his knife on a strop.

Now he is making pronouncements that would make a well-read child ashamed of himself. Rishi is talking about the “fairy tales” allegedly peddled by his rivals. They are promising, he says, both low taxes and high public spending.

By contrast, his own take on the economy is “grown-up”. Rishi correctly believes that high spending must be accompanied by high taxation and, credit where it’s due, as Chancellor he practised what he preaches.

He isn’t the only one. The Tories have been in power for 12 years, and what they have to show for this stint is the highest public debt ever and the greatest taxation burden in decades. And now two of the perpetrating chancellors, Sunak and Javid, have the gall to preach sound economics.

No one, including Rishi, is even mooting the possibility of reducing both spending and taxes. All they are saying is that the latter would be destructive without the former – and the blighters are right about that. Yet they all refuse even to consider the possibility of reducing the economy-busting, inflation-boosting, business-stifling public spending.

Now that the unauthorised piss-up and the odd drunken homosexual pass have been removed as targets, the plotters are trying to sort it out among themselves on the battleground of the economy. Yet they haven’t come up with a single realistic proposal on how they are going to reverse Johnson’s disastrous policies.

The reason is simple. They know they would have done exactly the same in his place – and will do exactly the same when the occupy his place. Moreover, they have all been complicit in the protracted suicide pact going by the name of our economic policy.

Will any of those spivs have the courage to announce he’ll abandon the lunatic net-zero emissions policy to which Johnson committed Britain? Will they admit that the underlying theory was hatched by those who hate our civilisation?

Will they paraphrase Churchill to say that “never in the field of human economics has so much been destroyed by so few to impoverish so many on so little scientific evidence”?

Will they abandon the insane and counterproductive drive for ‘renewable’ energy (which will never be able to power a modern economy) and instead demand an increase in oil and gas production? Will they provide incentives for the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas (fracking), whose vast reserves would make Britain independent of foreign sources?

Will they abolish green taxes and regulations? Stop encouraging the electric-car madness? Lower fuel duty from its current rate of 57.95p per litre, plus 20 per cent VAT? That alone would instantly lower the prices at the pump, but they aren’t going to do that, are they?

Yet Johnson’s refusal to cut such consumption taxes was one of the mightiest blows he delivered to the economy. Here’s an opening for you, chaps, wide enough to drive a petrol tanker through. Alas, that foot isn’t coming anywhere near the accelerator pedal.

Yet fuel prices are the principal contributing factor of the runaway inflation rate. Quite apart from its immediately destructive effects on the economy, a two-digit inflation rate creates a devastating shift in personal economic behaviour.

It discourages prudence and thrift, while encouraging profligate spending, gambling investments and indebtedness. With their nest eggs being dismantled twig by twig, people will rush either to spend their money while it can still buy something or to invest it in something that may retain value, usually property.

High public spending financed by burgeoning borrowing and taxation is what drives the inflation upwards. Are any of our aspiring leaders going to reverse this trend? Don’t be silly.

Another blow inflation delivers to the standard of living is the so-called bracket creep. As money loses its real value, its nominal value goes up. Thus more and more people are being pushed into higher tax brackets, which leaves even less money for their families.

Instead of freezing income tax brackets, Johnson, ably assisted by Chancellor Sunak, imposed an extra 2.5 per cent national insurance tax. Ask Rishi if he is going to abandon that piece of economic sabotage, see what he says.

Stimulating business and attracting investment are two ways of treating economic ills. Yet instead of lowering business taxes to make Britain a paradise for investors, Johnson-Sunak hiked them high enough to produce an investment hell. Will Rishi undo this damage? Of course not.

Johnson deserved to be dumped for his wokery, virtue-signalling, socialist policies reminiscent of Roosevelt’s New Deal and economically ruinous politicking. Yet none of the candidates shows the slightest sign of being any different, except in the direction of being even worse.

At least Johnson managed to get us out of that corrupt and ineffectual Leviathan, the EU, something most of his rivals fought. Thanks to that he was able to respond to the two great blights of his tenure, Covid and Putin, better than any of his European counterparts.

Putin and his gang wildly celebrating Johnson’s resignation is testimony to at least one good thing he did in government. He is our enemy’s enemy, which should give Johnson a sporting chance of being our friend.

Dubious achievements falling short of ideal responses, some would say. True. But at least they were indeed achievements.

What did Cameron achieve? Legalised homomarriage? And what about that darling bud of May? What did she ever do, other than trying to sabotage the greatest vote in British history?

One doesn’t have to be a soothsayer to predict that the Rishi, Sajid, Jeremy, Liz circus won’t yield a leader any better than Johnson. Even worse, is the safe way to bet.