Rishi Sunak has his fists up – we have to accept pain of interest rate rises now or economic agony in future
IT takes a lot to divert attention from Russia’s latest mad dog revolution and the looming bloodbath at the top of the Kremlin.
Why on earth was Laura Kuenssberg spending an hour of BBC primetime chatting with the PM about interest rates and mortgages when the world might be sliding into World War Three?
Well, as it happens, the interview was worth watching.
It revealed a refreshing new version of Rishi Sunak as a fluent, combative leader engaged in a quite different war — the kill-or-cure fight against inflation.
“Inflation is the enemy we need to conquer,” insisted the assertive new Prime Minister.
Here was a step change from the smiling but slightly apologetic Tory leader who has been popping up on our screens since taking over from Boris and Liz.
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Rishi had his fists up.
Interest rates needed to rise as a matter of economic life or death, he insisted.
If we don’t accept pain now we will live in agony longer.
Laura tried to entice him into offering pain relief — presumably in vastly expensive bail-outs for hard-hit home owners facing penal mortgage rates.
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“Is it worth the pain?” she pleaded.
“Inflation is what causes pain,” explained the new, no-messing Prime Minister.
“It eats the Pound in your pocket, it makes your pay cheque go less far, it eats into your savings and it puts at risk your jobs and livelihoods.”
But what about those poor public sector workers striking for more pay, such as the 35 per cent for junior doctors?
“I am going to do what is affordable and what is responsible,” Rishi replied.
“That may not always be popular in the short term but it is the right thing for the country.”
He might have been thinking of our stonking £2.6TRILLION national debt, which has just eclipsed the UK’s entire income for the first time since 1961.
For all the Tories’ recent self-inflicted wounds, this was a global, not just a British, crisis.
We have had a pandemic, a war in Ukraine, he said.
Self-inflicted wounds
Interest rates have soared around the world. The PM stopped short of blaming “Plank of England” plodder Andrew Bailey, ruler of Britain’s national bank, for letting UK inflation and interest rates rip ahead of the rest.
He even found time to unveil plans for long-term reform of the stricken NHS, with fast-track training for doctors and nurses.
“It will draw on the latest innovation techniques and streamline the progress from classroom to clinic,” said Rishi.
But that will take years, said Laura. What about hospital waiting lists right now?
“Yes, it might take five, ten or 15 years, but that doesn’t mean it is the wrong thing to do,” said the PM.
After all, he could have said, remember ex-deputy PM Nick Clegg, who rejected nuclear power because it would take ten years to come on line.
That was ten years ago. Cleggie was famously short-sighted.
Off-camera throughout Laura’s interview, steam screaming out of his ears, was stand-up socialist Ben Elton.
The comic who made his fortune hilariously satirising Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s had lost his sense of humour.
“This was a meaningless, evasive word salad,” he spluttered.
“He’s as much a mendacious, narcissistic sociopath as his previous boss.”
‘I will deliver’
Even for Ben Elton this was surely a tad harsh.
Does he seriously think that Sir Keir Starmer, the weathervane Labour leader who points whichever way the wind is blowing, would do a better job?
Rishi doesn’t. “I resigned as Chancellor when I didn’t agree with the Government,” he said.
“Starmer sat there with Corbyn for four years.”
Starmer, in other words, fought to install the most extreme left-wing Labour government in history.
Can the Tories win in ’24? asked Laura.
“Yes, because I will deliver what I promise. Labour want to borrow £28billion a year.
"They don’t think we should exploit our North Sea energy resources at a time of energy crisis, and they are not prepared to stand up to unaffordable union pay claims.
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“These will be the choices at the next election.”
You could almost hear Ben Elton sobbing into his BBC tea.
Psycopath exposes 'Mad Vlad'
“USING your imagination to predict what might happen in Putin’s Russia is a waste of time,” says a Moscow-watcher.
“It will always be worse.”
“Mad Vlad” Putin, brutally exposed by Wagner psychopath Yevgeny Prigozhin as a war-mongering liar, has lost all credibility and authority at home.
He may not have long to live.
As author Peter Pomerantsev concluded in the title of his book on Russian deceit and corruption: “Nothing Is True, And Everything Is Possible.”
Or in a famous assessment of Kremlin politics down the ages, this is a system of “absolutism moderated by assassination”.
Sleep soundly, Vladimir Vladimirovich.