Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: For many, the silly season is already tragic

A tiny electorate of Conservative party members, the majority over 55, white and affluent and living in the south of England, will choose either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss as the next British prime minister. Photo:PA Wire.
A tiny electorate of Conservative party members, the majority over 55, white and affluent and living in the south of England, will choose either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss as the next British prime minister. Photo:PA Wire. A tiny electorate of Conservative party members, the majority over 55, white and affluent and living in the south of England, will choose either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss as the next British prime minister. Photo:PA Wire.

You can focus on politics with eyes half-closed or you can try to dismiss it all as the silly season. It may be silly to the point of farce. But for many the situation is already tragic.

People struggle alongside others with cushioned lives. Yes, some of us who imagine our lifestyles are modest have advantages; age, luck, and accompanying privilege; education that was state-subsidised, homes with mortgages paid off, adult children independent enough to refuse subsidies. Health that hasn’t as yet brought painful decisions. A soaring crane over Belfast’s Lisburn Road, constant building work at private clinics mean people voting with their wallets, no doubt many in bad pain, justified fear. Is money to queue-jump for medical attention the most shaming luxury? ‘Wait until it happens to you or yours...’

Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown for all his own mis-steps slugs away at today’s inequalities, while Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak woo the cosiest of the privileged. They either ignore the Bank of England’s forecast of runaway inflation and imminent recession or suggest their programmes will fix the economy. (The foremost economist backing Truss is Brexiteer Patrick Minford, sage to one strand of unionism.)

A Brown-commissioned study finds families up to £1,600 a year worse off because of the soaring cost of living, even with ‘welfare’ benefits. He has helped nudge Keir Starmer into the growing clamour for an emergency budget. But a Downing Street ‘source’ told Sky at the weekend that the squatter in Number Ten ‘believes big fiscal decisions should be left solely to the next prime minister’. Of course he does. Let Truss or even better Sunak swing at the next election to put a retrospective gloss on him.

There are people with decisions to make who are not in pain, nor representative. Conservative party members, the majority over 55, white and affluent and living in the south of England, the tiny electorate about to choose the next British prime minister is courted recklessly by Truss and Sunak. Both have tried walking back their crudest offers. Truss may yet go too far for her ragbag of supporters but at the time of writing she had the wind and almost daily new recruits behind her.

She discounts calling a snap autumn election, declares there will be no ‘handouts’ to help those whose incomes cannot cope with fuel and food costs. Not proper Thatcherite Toryism, see.

Sunak, among the most wealthy MPs if not the absolute richest, told local Tories ‘in a rather lovely garden in Tunbridge Wells’ (as a video belatedly confirmed) that as Chancellor he tried to re-route funding to areas like theirs rather than ‘deprived urban areas’.

In October, the Bank of England says, the rate of inflation at 13.3 per cent will be the highest it’s been since 1980. Percentages and words like inflation make the semi-numerate among us tune out, but even the least numerate have begun to focus. When summer goes the poorest will have no choice or the worst; heating over eating. Whereas we who may even have some savings are better placed to deal with bleak forecasts. Interest rates up; hey, small silver lining. (Stroke the conscience, find donation details again for food banks.)

Some Tory MPs are beginning to realise that this PM-choosing electorate, their own membership, is way to the right of them. Some Red Wall MPs are clearly horrified at the Trussites. The more they see of acolytes Nadine Dorries, Rees-Mogg, and the increasingly visible Brandon Lewis the sharper internal panic will be.

No mention of politics in Northern Ireland? Little point. It has rarely been more captive to Westminster.

The best hope is that in a real election the Tories will discover that stoking anger - on immigration, ‘culture wars’, the EU’s supposed vindictiveness in taking Brexit at its word - is not popular. And that people have hearts about those fleeing scorching places, and poverty, as well as wars.