Power-crazed Sunak and Truss are taking the Scottish people for mugs
IN following the current Conservative Party leadership contest with a distinctly macabre sense of dread and foreboding, as Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak square up and squabble over who is the authentic heir to Margaret Thatcher, I am left genuinely wondering as to the true purpose of the UK’s so-called political leadership.
While the SNP/Greens-run Scottish Government is – like most administrations around the world – far from perfect, there is at least some semblance of working on behalf of and in the best interests of communities across Scotland.
But in watching the Sunak v Truss catfight, conducted in a petty, bitter and divisive tone while the country sinks into ever-deeper peril, it seems the real issues seriously and adversely affecting ordinary British people today are barely worthy of a mention, let alone serious analysis and debate.
On the very day London burned, and indeed since, neither candidate has seriously addressed how, if elected by a tiny, unrepresentative minority of the UK population, the existential threats of our time such as the climate emergency and the cost-of-living crisis would be tackled, the candidates preferring to squabble over taxation and who can crack down (such a favourite phrase of the Conservative Party) hardest on desperate people fleeing famine, persecution and conflict zones around the world.
Yet winning the Conservative ticket to lead the party into – and quite possibly even win – the next General Election remains front and centre of Tory Party ambitions, ensuring much more of the same empty promises and even more draconian, populist political dogma and rhetoric.
But, it seems, to hell with the electorate’s concerns over the burgeoning rise in foodbanks, the social care and NHS crisis, spiralling fuel prices, sky-rocketing energy bills, extraordinary and rising inflation, all the catastrophic end-product inflicted on the country after a dozen years, and counting, of ruinous, self-serving and unscrupulous Conservative government.
And that’s not to mention the egregious error of judgment that was, and continues to be Brexit; the Tories even try to convince us it’s a rip-roaring success. So we, the British and Scottish people, who ultimately pay directly or indirectly for the entire governmental firmament, are treated as gullible stooges, patsies and mugs.
More fool us; whatever your views on the constitutional question, we Scots surely must, for the good of our country, act to prevent another term of the same old ineptitude, mendacity and blatant political self-interest.
Mike Wilson, Longniddry.