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Rishi Sunak
(Source: HM Treasury)
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UPDATE (22/12/22): Today's Mirror and Telegraph front pages have quite different headlines.
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Mirror 22nd Dec 2022
(Source: BBC News)
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Telegraph 22nd Dec 2022
(Source: BBC News)
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Having repeatedly said it is nothing to do with them and done by the supposedly "Independent" pay board, the Government appears to be offering a deal, according to the Tory-friendly Telegraph. Whereas the Labour-friendly Mirror front page tells quite a different story.
Both have their own editorial narrative, which could be construed as misinformation or even (deliberate) disinformation or "fake news", depending on your point-of-view and the level of sourcing they provide to evidence their headlines. Neither of them are headlined - OPINION, though!
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by Andrew Pope, Master of Social Sciences (Global Politics and International Relations, Southampton University, 2010), small business owner, former postman, union representative and Labour and Independent Councillor and Parliamentary Candidate
Southampton Independents has investigated the claims of the Prime Minister and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak about his connections with Southampton, and with Southampton Football Club ("Saints").
We have published some of the results of those investigations. National media outlets have conducted investigations too and in a democracy worth anything, so they should be.
A Meteoric Rise of An Out-of-Touch Prime Minister in A Failed Government
Why have we done these investigations? Because it is relevant to Southampton, it is relevant to our democracy and because in Government, whether Chancellor or PM, Mr Sunak regularly mentions his family and his background in Southampton, including in attempted defences of his performance and of the Government.
In a democracy, Member of Parliament (MPs), Ministers and Governments must be held to account. They are public figures that deserve some privacy. But where the line is drawn is an open question and the actions of the public figures themselves can drag the private into the public realm.
Mr Sunak tries to make out that he is in touch with the common man and the common woman, and has regularly used examples from Southampton. He is clearly not in touch, based on his actions and inaction, and it is more of the image-cleansing that we have already commented on. His rise has been described as meteoric. How and why that was requires examination, especially in the light of the image-cleansing that has accompanied his rise.
The revelations about Mr Sunak's wife's wealth and tax status prompted Mr Sunak to complain that his family was being unfairly targeted. Perhaps he had a point, if he himself did not drag matters out of the dark and into the light.
Yet Mr Sunak himself was quoted in the Daily Echo using his parents as a defence when under attack by the Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. Sunak said:
"Whenever he attacks me about where I went to school, he attacks the hard-working aspirations of millions of people in this country. He's attacking people like my parents."
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Daily Echo, 1st Dec 2022
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So Mr Sunak himself has politicised his own family. The personal has become the political by his own hand.
When a politician exercises rank hypocrisy like this, they are rightly open to criticism and to being derided, whether by public figures or the public at large.
And it has very real consequences for the citizens of our country.
Demagoguery and Damage
Saints legend Matt Le Tissier has derided Mr Sunak's claims that "Le Tiss" was his favourite player. Le Tissier said that he didn't care about it when interviewed (apparently) in Southampton on GB News by Nigel Farage. The Leader of the Conservative Group on Southampton City Council, Councillor Daniel Fitzhenry, appeared on the same programme. Cllr Fitzhenry got a hard time from Farage.
Despite his own ill-advised public comments, the Saints legend Le Tissier received an ingratiating love-in from arch-demagogue Farage. You can draw your own conclusions as to why a populist like Farage would do this. And you can probably work out why the damage to Cllr Fitzhenry and "Local Conservatives" was engineered by Farage, even if it might be deserved.
Whomever in the local Conservative association thought that Fitzhenry's appearance was wise, might reconsider that decision. Perhaps it was Fitzhenry himself, having recently become Leader of the Conservatives again after being ousted by Marley Guthrie.
Out Of Touch With Working People
Mr Sunak attended private education. And he was filmed in the Southampton home of his parents saying that he had "no working class" friends. It does not take a genius to work out why, when he only attended private education, ending up at Winchester College after private schools, as reported by the Daily Echo. Michael (Lord) Ashcroft's book describes this.
An out-of-touch education leads to out-of-touch decisions. This has been the case throughout successive Labour or Conservative governments, going back decades in the case of the former and centuries for the latter.
Why is Mr Sunak's education and his lack of contact with the majority of the population of our country relevant? Because he makes decisions that are out-of-touch. I contend that it has been educated into him. And he has had a privileged upbringing and education that was ironically funded, at least in part, by the taxpayer via the NHS as both parents received NHS payments as GP and Pharmacist.
And the litany of industrial disputes facing our country show how out-of-touch he is with working people.
The chaos caused by the Conservatives is so bad that "advent calendars" of strikes have been produced for the entire month of December.
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Royal Mail Strikes
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Should the public sector workers, whether posties, nurses, railway staff or paramedics be blamed for wanting a fair pay settlement under sustained high inflation?
No, when it is Rishi Sunak's actions and inaction that have caused the chaos in public services and the rampant inflation and cost-of-living crisis that workers face.
Mr Sunak is responsible, whether as Chancellor, as a member of the Government and now as Prime Minister.
And still Mr Sunak and his Government refuse to intervene, despite being the chief causes of the economic crash and resultant disputes over pay and conditions.
Why? How?
It is elected representatives that have to be held to account. That is what should happen. Indeed, if the United Kingdom is a democracy worth anything, that is what must happen.
Labour or Tory, Same Old Story
Like they did in the 1970s under Edward Heath, the Conservative Government will probably lose out due to these disputes. And they will lose the next General Election.
It is probably only a question of how much they will lose, not whether they will lose.
And that is what their failure deserves.
Whether a Labour Government will be any better...well, perhaps we should look at the 1970s again and the disastrous mismanagement of the economy by the last Labour Government under Gordon Brown. That is what led to the Tories gaining power.
And in the not-too-distant-future, a crackdown on workers' rights will result, whether under a Labour or Tory Government, making working people even worse off than they are already.
Labour or Tory, same old story...
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