AFTER enduring Kwasi Kwarteng’s supercilious and smirking arrogance in his representations to the media, are we allowed to take some comfort in his being scapegoated and sacked as Chancellor of the Exchequer by the very leader whose flawed ideology he supported, and whom he prostrated himself to and hung his now defunct political credibility and career on?

This latest Downing Street musical chairs shambles is like Putin trying to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the international community by claiming the war crimes he’s perpetrating in Ukraine were not down to him, and hanging some inconsequential itinerant general out to dry to absorb culpability and take one for the team.

Isn’t the shambles of Westminster government a political disgrace, as well as being an economics disaster?

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Jeremy Vine is sporting a lettuce on his show that 82% of his Twitter poll reckon will last longer than Truss. Who really doubts it? Shouldn’t we support the lettuce?

Watching Truss’s performance between her PMQs and Friday’s press statement, the only response she ever gives is that she has delivered her “solution” to the energy crisis by capping average bills at £2,500 per annum, ignoring the simple fact that this is still 100% more than this time last year, and still woefully unaffordable for those on low incomes, basic pensions or dependent on benefits.

Is anyone happy to accept this as the panacea to end all panaceas and forget the crippling increase in mortgage rates that threaten homelessness for millions, the exponential rise in food prices exacerbating poverty, the threats to incomes from loss of employment as the economy shrinks, and the salient truth that the markets have no faith in her policies and leadership of the sixth-biggest economy in the world?

So now Truss has appointed as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, who we all remember for his flawed stewardship as Health Secretary, and who was deemed to be of such high calibre for Cabinet office that Truss failed to appoint him to her Cabinet when she arrived blinded by the headlights at No 10.

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So, what’s changed? Chuck Kwasi under the bus for delivering the policies she instructed him to pursue and bring in a replacement “yes man” languishing in the hinterland of Tory party influence. Doesn’t this display the paucity of talent in the Conservative party, and Truss’s desperation to retain her position come what may?

While no-one relishes it, the democratic imperative is for the electorate to decide the way forward. We need a General Election without delay to right the wrongs of this corrupt Tory party bereft of any competent ideas on how to manage the economy and act in the interests of the entire electorate.

None of this surprises me. My only concern is when are Scots going to get angry enough to demand that we determine our own future through being the independent nation that history says we should be, and contemporary shenanigans demonstrate that our only hope for social and political justice rests at Holyrood in full control of the mechanics of independent nationhood. Isn’t it time to get angry and protest for Scottish democracy, and demand it?

Jim Taylor
Edinburgh

LIZ Truss was never going to accept responsibility and resign, it’s entirely her style to blame someone else. I suspect that Kwasi Kwarteng, after suffering the horrendous humiliation, will leave politics probably fairly soon. He doesn’t strike me as the type of person to be cuckolded and meekly accept it on the back benches.

Walter Barrie
via thenational.scot