TORIES IN SCOTLAND HUMILIATED BY U-TURN
The dog-like devotion of Scotland’s Tory branch office to their London bosses was abjectly exposed last week by the Prime Minister’s dramatic u-turn on her tax plans.
Devoid of critical thinking, immediately new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced his nonsensical proposals to cut taxes through increased borrowing - paid for by middle-income taxpayers at rocketing rates of interest - Scotland’s Tories demanded the SNP Government follow suit. Obviously, the First Minister clarified that cutting taxes for people earning more than £150,000 a year is not SNP policy, nor would we meekly follow Westminster. Like them.
Despite the pound crashing to an historic low and the Bank of England having to find £65,000 million to stop pension funds from collapsing, Scotland’s blinkered and docile Tories kept to their script.
English Tory MPs, newspapers and commentators joined the clamour to change course. Embarrassingly, for them, Scotland’s Tories did not. However, when Ms Truss announced a spectacular u-turn not 24 hours after pledging to ‘stay the course’ the Tory ‘leader’ at Holyrood meekly announced it was ‘the right decision.’
No doubt, like the captain of the Titanic, he’d have said the same had Ms Truss kept to her disastrous course.
English Tory MPs have long been contemptuous of sycophantic party colleagues from Scotland who fail to speak up for Scottish interests as English MPs proudly do for England. This was a humiliation of such magnitude it exposed Scotland’s Tories as the most abject cypher for Westminster.
No wonder their poll ratings in Scotland have plummeted to 12%!
The UK Tory Government has spent its12 years in office lurching from one avoidable crisis to the next as a direct result of Party infighting.
Three Prime Ministers ago, David Cameron’s continuation of austerity - brought in by the previous Labour Government following the financial crisis - led to us inadvertently being dragged out of Europe in a bid to appease Tory Eurosceptics. Therese May botched the European Union withdrawal agreement. Boris Johnson illegally prorogued Parliament, presided over a litany of illegal lockdown parties and completely destroyed the public’s trust in the office of Prime Minister.
Now, after only weeks in office, Prime Minister Truss has badly damaged the UK economy. Her bid to appear strong and decisive backfiring spectacularly.
The fallout from the new administration’s ‘mini-budget’ has been huge, taking a wrecking ball to UK finances, endangering pension funds, causing banks to withdraw mortgage products and leaving millions of families across the UK in deep financial distress.
It was all so avoidable.
Within days of announcing £45,000 million of unfunded tax cuts and sending the value of the pound into freefall, Ms Truss u-turned on her shameful plan to hand the wealthiest a huge tax break as it became clear that English Tory MPs wouldn’t back it.
Her Tory Conference speech last week failed to reverse the damage, with little hope that plans to impose £18,000 million of cuts which will threaten Scotland's public services, our NHS and people's incomes, will be dropped.
Scotland needs independence. And we need it now!
