POLITICS: A lying liar who lied and lied
It’s been another one of those weeks in politics where, when it comes to writing this column you have to stop and think about where, exactly, do we begin.
There seems to have been many of these weeks since at least 2015 and one of the ‘frequent flyers’ whose name crops up with monotonous regularity when it comes to such things is the former Prime Minister and now former MP Boris Johnson.
As is well-known, a report by a Parliamentary Committee into the former Prime Minister’s behaviour showed he repeatedly lied to the public and parliament.
This, and Johnson’s subsequent behaviour, makes it impossible not to agree with those who are calling for removal of his taxpayer-funded allowance which former Prime Ministers receive, the binning of his honours list, and recouping his legal fees.
Readers may be familiar with the controversy around the non-appointment to the House of Lords of former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, although she was apparently promised this would happen.
There’s now something of a blame game going on between the current and former Prime Ministers about who ‘interfered’ to stop this happening.
At over 860 members and second only in size to the legislature of the People’s Republic of China, the House of Lords will not miss not having Ms Dorries within its number.
Indeed, the numbers could do with some pruning and we could do without fair number of those, say around 860. We’d then have an opportunity to replace it with something which not only had some democratic accountability but was also more reflective of the make up of the UK as a whole and the people within it.
The rather more serious news last week was that new research from consumer group Which? found that food inflation in the ingredients for popular family meals had risen by 27 per cent in the last year.
The UK is not unique in this regard of course but in contrast, the Irish and French governments have worked constructively with major retailers to reduce food prices, while the UK Government sit on their hands and refuse to act.
Meanwhile, UK Government borrowing costs have sky-rocketed to a 15-year high and have even surpassed the sky-high rate of borrowing that resulted from Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.
The effect of this will be to will push mortgage rates up even higher for thousands of households and result in more and more people unable to pay their bills, with an average two-year fixed mortgage rate now at an eye-watering 5.9 per cent.
In addition to all of this, we’re set to be hit with even more Brexit pain as new inspection charges on food entering the UK from the EU have been put on the table by the UK Government.
Plans drawn up would see a charge of £43 for each shipment of food coming in from the continent. Experts from the food and logistics industry have warned this could push prices up even higher for consumers.
While £43 may not seem like a lot, the British Chambers of Commerce have warned that the charges would hit small businesses particularly hard as they would be bringing in ‘smaller, lower value shipments’.
In short, Westminster needs to focus less on who’s not getting a peerage and spend more time on trying to manage the economy in a way that helps people tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
