Liz Truss must focus on bricks and mortar if she’s to build back trust
IF owning your own home is the British dream, then losing the family home is our collective nightmare.
Margaret Thatcher was not adored because she rode a Challenger tank, or because she invaded the Falklands, or because the Russians called her the Iron Lady.
Thatcher was loved because she enabled millions to own their own home.
In 1980 Thatcher’s Right To Buy scheme led to more than 2.5million council tenants buying their own homes.
Working-class families suddenly had a stake in society that they had never had before. It made them Tories for life.
And it works the other way.
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If working families lose their homes because they can no longer pay their mortgage after years of Tory government, then they will never vote Tory again.
Liz Truss has been Prime Minister for less than a month.
Those already seeking to stuff Liz into the recycling bin of history hate the Tories, hate Brexit and hate Truss — the Remainer who became a born-again Brexiteer.
But the fear of losing our homes is real. It touches anyone with a mortgage — or anyone applying for a mortgage.
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Thatcher understood the aspiration of working people to own their home. But she did not invent the aspiration.
My father was a greengrocer. Dad never shared the contents of his pay packet with me but I imagine he never made much more than minimum wage in his entire working life.
Yet by doing two extra jobs, he got us out of a rented flat above the shop where he worked and into a semi-detached house in the Essex suburbs. I grew up there. My parents lived and died there.
The dream of owning your home was there long before Thatcher.
But Maggie made it a reality for millions.
What’s happening with Liz Truss’s fledgling government is almost Maggie Thatcher in reverse.
Much bluster around Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is overheated waffle.
The 45 per cent tax rate — ditched by Kwarteng — did not exist during Tony Blair’s decade in power.
The 45 per cent rate was only introduced by Gordon Brown, a spectacularly crap Labour Prime Minister who never won a general election.
The 45 per cent tax rate is not the foundation for all that is decent and good in our country.
But the terror of soaring mortgage payments is undeniable.
We had forgotten what mortgage anxiety feels like. And now we remember.
I was living in my first flat when mortgage interest rates reached their highest point in modern history.
In 1981 the annual average rate was close to 17 per cent. I vividly recall waking up in the middle of the night, worried sick about how I could make the next payment.
After many years of rock bottom interest rates, we had forgotten those nice mortgage lenders from the glossy ads can — and most certainly will — take your home away if you can’t pay your mortgage.
During Covid, borrowers were allowed to take a break from mortgage payments. Why can’t that happen now?
If mortgage Armageddon is not averted then the Tories are heading for annihilation at the next general election.
When suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn’s career was destined to end in failure, I always wondered — why would anyone vote for a Labour Party that hates them?
And there is an equally brutal equation today.
Why would you vote for a Tory Party that did nothing when your family lost their home?
Kens a no-go as BoJo
SOME critics have complained that This England, Sky’s Boris Johnson drama, is not a barrel of laughs.
But then it’s not easy to make a comedy about the worst health emergency to hit the human race in 100 years.
It’s true the chuckles are few and far between, mostly relying on Kenneth Branagh’s Boris chasing Dylan the dog through Downing Street with a poo bag in his hand.
But as pure drama, This England is something close to a masterpiece.
Because it depicts the true story of fallible politicians and their Oxbridge-educated flunkies struggling to cope with a modern plague that is beyond anything they have ever experienced or imagined.
The problem I had with This England was the male lead. Kenneth Branagh’s Boris is far too haggard and jowly to pass for the real thing.
Branagh’s Bojo looks more like Stanley Johnson.
Or do I mean Rachel?
Gwyn-win for Moss and Paltrow
WITH a combined age of 98, glamour girls Gwyneth Paltrow (50) and Kate Moss (48) strut their stuff with timeless aplomb on Instagram and the Paris catwalk.
With the careless cool that she has made her own, Kate drags her fur down the boulevard like a lovestruck suitor.
Meanwhile, Paltrow poses naked and painted gold to mark her 50th birthday.
Women were once praised for looking good for their age.
Golden girls Moss and Paltrow look sensational for any age you care to mention.
Kat and 9 wails
I HAVE a friend who insists that the most depressing words in the English language are: “Over to Katya Adler in Brussels.”
Katya, the BBC’s Europe Editor, was the BBC’s correspondent for gloom and doom in the long march to Brexit.
Now our departure from the EU is a hard historic fact, Katya is still finding plenty to bitch about.
She fabulously displayed that famous BBC impartiality when reporting on Giorgia Meloni’s election victory in Italy.
“Millions of Italians didn’t vote for her,” sniffed Katya of the right-wing firebrand.
“They say they do not recognise themselves in her nationalist, protectionist proposals, her anti-immigration rhetoric and conservative family mores.”
Katya is correct, of course. But then exactly the same thing could be said of any general election.
Surely the point is not the millions of Italians who didn’t vote for Meloni – but the many millions more who did.
All get behind Gareth
ON the eve of the World Cup, England have now gone 320 days without winning a competitive match.
Hard to believe when we watched England score three goals in 12 dazzling minutes against Germany at Wembley on Monday night.
But lest we forget – Gareth Southgate has taken England closer to glory than any manager since Sir Alf Ramsey.
Football didn’t come home in 2018, when England lost in the semi-final of the World Cup.
And it didn’t come home in 2021, when we lost on penalties to Italy in the Euros Final.
But don’t you remember? For a few blissful nights it felt like it was coming home.
And that is thanks to Gareth Southgate.
The idea that England would be better off with a hired hand like Pep Guardiola is totally bonkers. Southgate feels for England in his blood and bones.
Who can forget the broken-hearted boy in blue who missed his penalty at Euro 1996?
And the proud man in his waistcoat in Russia in 2018?
As England prepare for the World Cup, this England manager deserves our country’s unconditional support.
More than this – Southgate has earned it.
In with the old
THEY don’t like it up ’em, Comrade Putin.
Vlad’s rabble army of rapists and murderers is being reinforced by geriatrics.
While Putin and his billionaire cronies live the good life in Moscow, these wrinkled recruits get shipped to the killing fields to fight against a highly motivated, heavily armed Ukraine.
Putin hopes that Ukraine run out of weapons before he runs out of cannon fodder.
And when that hope is gone, all Putin has left are his nuclear weapons.
Tony's having doubts
FOR all the rictus grinning, when the Strictly camera catches Tony Adams in moments of reflection, he looks totally stricken.
You can almost see the thought bubble above the former Arsenal skipper’s noble brow.
“What have I let myself in for?”
It’s OK to be rubbish on Strictly – many are – but only as long as you can laugh at yourself.
Ed Balls doing the salsa with Katya Jones – now Tony’s dancing partner, right – to Gangnam Style is the classic example.
Ed knew he looked like an overweight, middle-aged bloke making a fool of himself with a slinky professional goddess. But Ed saw the funny side.
He laughed first. Balls recognised the absurdity of the situation.
The world warmed to Ed Balls on Strictly in a way that it never did when he was in Government.
So much so that the last time I was on Good Morning Britain – there was Ed . . . sitting next to Susanna Reid!
Ed has turned his dad dancing into a burgeoning broadcasting career.
Look at Balls, Tony Adams.
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If you can’t be good on Strictly – be funny.
Just don’t be rubbish and also deadly serious.