UK’s pillars are crumbling but Tories like Liz Truss lack talent and graft to fix them

And if you can spot the difference between the UK “government” and the latest breed of self-operating electric cars then your eyesight is considerably better than mine.

It is unconscionable to think that at a time of maximum peril for families up and down the country, the people charged with protecting their wellbeing are either a) having a second holiday in Greece or b) travelling round the country talking only to themselves.

It’s as if the entire political machine is being engulfed in flames while those hired to operate the hoses are standing around gazing at the nearest navel. Come to think of it...

By this time next week, the full horror of increased energy charges will have been revealed and Number 10 will still be empty of anyone resembling a boss person since the outgoing one is awfully busy selecting his sunscreen factor and the incoming one is yet to be given the nod by the world’s smallest and least-qualified electorate.

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In the interim, they stumble from hustings to hustings, outbidding each other as to who can devise the reddest meat for the bluest audiences, interspersed with meaningless photo ops.

It’s telling that one member of Ofgem, the body supposedly regulating the energy sector, has already thrown in the towel, saying she can’t cope with the fact that their interventions have thus far favoured the suppliers at the expense of the poor bloody consuming infantry.

And the reaction of the current frontrunner for the top job? Not-very-busy Lizzie attracts rapturous applause from the faithful for pronouncing that profit is not a dirty word. Especially if you’re the chap hoovering up the readies via enhanced salary and bonuses, or the shareholder watching the money roll in, roll in.

This is not the first government to bend the knee to the business lobbyists, but it’s certainly the most enthusiastic cheerleader for making money regardless of the collateral damage ensuing. So do not hold your breath for the Truss person to suddenly embrace communitarianism.

She and Rishi do share one compelling characteristic however – neither can tell their geographical arse from their elbow. Liz has variously been a Paisley-schooled girl, a Leeds-schooled girl and a plain-speaking, London-based, Yorkshire woman (hailing from Oxford). I suppose we should be grateful that she didn’t open her Perth pitch with “hello Belfast”.

Meanwhile, Rishi, memorably polishing his Scottish credentials, said how proud he was of his innovative work and many visits to Darlington. How lovely to think that independence will bring us a whole new swathe of the UK once the Border has been shoved south.

The mask slipped more than a little with Mr Sunak when he advised a Tunbridge Wells audience that he had scrapped all that Labour nonsense about putting money into deprived areas when it was clear that the poor neglected upper-middle-class (AKA Tunbridge Wells) was a more deserving recipient of Treasury largesse.

Worse still, he used that old Tory trope of poverty being the result of general fecklessness, suggesting that there were far more employment opportunities available if only benefit recipients would avail themselves of them. This is a truly terrifying misinterpretation of the current crisis, matched only by his partner in candidacy crime having suggested that the reason for slow growth was a lack of productive work by the British worker.

Neither seem able to either grasp or digest several inconvenient facts, among which is that a vast number of families either in or destined for poverty already have jobs. Sometimes two or three, but the pay from these always leaves too much week left at the end of their money. They too qualify for benefits on the grounds of their income being on the draughty side of measly.

As for the job vacancies dwarfing the unemployment statistics ... how thick do you have to be to recognise that an out-of-work scaffolder in Aberdeen is unlikely to be attracted by seasonal, temporary fruit-picking in Lincolnshire, or dishwashing in London pubs?

To say nothing of the skills mismatch. To say even less (as they all do) about the fact that so many vacancies are down to those famous Brexit bonuses.

Bonuses like the health service being denuded of skilled EU labour after hundreds of thousands voted with their feet when the welcome mat was wheeched from under them. Bonuses like fruit-pickers with years of experience finding they or their would-be employers were tangled up in newfangled red tape trying to get visas.

I DEFY anyone to draw comfort from the fact that the current minister in charge of Brexit “opportunities” is a certain Mr Rees-Mogg, who, along with that intellectual Titan, Nadine Dorries, was first out the ministerial traps to endorse Ms Truss. It would be cruel, but not necessarily inaccurate, to speculate that they thought it the only feasible route to keeping their current employment.

There was a modest celebration round my way when it seemed that Dorries would be kicked upstairs to the Lords by Johnson before he finally remembered that he wasn’t a prime minister any more. Then I recalled the unsavoury habit of having ministers operating from the Upper House which allows them to avoid that nasty business of scrutiny in the Commons by actual elected members. The Lord David Frost being the most recent and risible example.

Who could forget what a sterling job he did devising a Northern Ireland Protocol which threatened decades of peace while attracting opprobrium from the very party Theresa May spent so much taxpayers’ dosh bribing into submission?

So just how much trouble is the UK Government in? Let us count the ways. Several sectors have been decimated by the collateral damage of Brexit. How ironic that a suicide note featuring a promise of a bonfire of red tape and bureaucracy has ushered in an era of massively more red tape and bureaucracy.

They have just been warned by health service chiefs up and down the land that the likely effect of people trying to get through the winter with less heat and poor nourishment will not just be a further burden on the creaking NHS, but 10,000 avoidable deaths. Avoidable deaths seem to be the one area where the current UK “administration” can claim to excel.

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Galloping inflation, currently predicted to top 13%, has led to a rash of threatened and actual industrial action from everybody from railway staff to general practitioners. The common factor here is not just the pay offer being comprehensively less than the spiralling cost of living, but the fact that these workers are all unionised. The non-union folks face precisely the same daunting fate, but lack the muscle to do much about it.

In short, everywhere you look, the pillars of what developed nations consider a civilised world appear to be crumbling, while the only available stonemasons are intent on applying the wrong sort of sticking plaster to ever more gaping wounds.

We are advised that while the Government itself is largely AWOL, the civil service in departments like the Treasury have been beavering away polishing possible scenarios and solutions for the incoming cabinet and PM. Which is more than noble when you consider that the latter have committed to getting rid of 90,000 of the civil service at the precise moment their expertise has never been more essential.

It is one of the more dispiriting facets of this UK Government that it scours the horizon looking for someone, or some sector, on whom to cast blame. When, as we know, that question could more easily be answered by looking in the mirror.