As Truss and Sunak slug it out, rightwing papers are waking up to the looming catastrophe, says Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee
and worst prospects among similar countries – along with shrinking trade and the sinking pound. Traditionally they will blame all that on “global” and “Covid” causes, never on 12 crippling years of austerity or the hammer blows of their own Brexit.
But in this acid backbiting contest of pure personal ambition, the two candidates abandon concern for the political future of their party, gleefully pulling down the Tory temple and priming Labour’s electoral cannons with arsenals of ammunition. Truss’s crew fight back with a napalm shot of blame that will stick for years. They talk of the “Rishcession” and dub Sunak “the founding father of the recession”.
Every department is in trouble, but health bites hardest with voters. The fastest easing of the blockage would be by fixing the great social care collapse: last week’sfrom the levelling up, housing and communities select committee said there was “no roadmap, no timetable, no milestones, and no measures of success”.
I have been talking to care homes closing down beds for lack of staff, while hospitals call them hourly begging them to take patients. Theis accelerating, with 165,000 vacancies and 50,000 staff lost last year. Lynne Taylor of Happy Futures Support Specialists for people with learning disabilities in Devon is mothballing beds, as it’s short of 24 staff. She’s sending out someone dressed as Superman handing out recruitment leaflets saying “carers are superheroes”.
Here we go: the real world is finally colliding with this government. Wherever you look, in every threadbare service, there is no leeway, no resilience, no slack as the tidal wave of recession rolls in to expose all the damage done by years of austerity and low pay. Now that ministers themselves, these architects of decline, are pressing the panic button, their time is up. There is no plan and no roadmap for anything.
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