On your side

It seems that Truss has the wind in her sails. It looks more and more likely that her next stop will be number 10 Downing Street. How and why are questions for another time.

Last week, during one of the hustings she made a speech in which she said ‘If you work hard and do the right thing. If you save your money, start your own business, or go into work every day – I’m on your side.’ This sounds and reads like red meat to the Tory faithfull as I am sure it was meant to be. That is who, after all she was speaking to. Why then these speeches were on television is another matter then.

I don’t find Truss a natural orator, she seems laboured and stuttering to me though I am sure that she could work on these things over time, after all Thatcher, her heroine was a completely different speaker after a year or so in the job. Because of this I imagine that every word was drafted in advance for her and this is why I find her statement troubling.

I realise who her audience was yet the implications are clear. If you don’t work every day, don’t have savings or haven’t started your own business then you are of little, if any interest to her. Yet to be Prime Minister of the country your role is to do the best for all of the population and not just the favoured few. Already she has shown she intends to continue with the divisive politics that we have seen over the last decade. Her country will be divided into the deserving and the unwashed. 

This is what stinks about party politics. A party never represents the views of the population. It is only ever interested in the needs of its tribe.

If you are a pensioner, a student, work part time, an employee rather than an employer, are unable to work and have been unfortunate and spent your savings then you are not in Truss’ purview. By my reckoning that is most of us.

As for me, I continue to work hard and try to do the right thing. I have saved money and started my own business, two in fact, but as for Truss, she is not on my side.