Tory debate without Tories

Aren’t these debates fun? A knee-slapper, if you ask me.

“There’s nothing I can say about my opponent that hasn’t already been said about herpes. He has the intelligence of a doorknob, the moral sense of a skunk and the preening egotism of a B actress. He is the scum of the earth, which is why I’ll appoint him to a Great Office of State if I win.”

That’s a slight embellishment of what Dizzy Lizzy said about Fishy Rishi in yesterday’s debate, but she did utter words to that effect.

Sunak, said Miss Truss, is “unfit for office”. But of course she’d give him a post in her cabinet if she won. We wouldn’t want to waste talent like that, would we now?

How does that even add up? Is he fit or unfit? Is she? One thing for sure: such verbal jousts aren’t the way to answer questions of this kind.

Miss Truss, who used to make rousing speeches at LibDem conferences, held Mr Sunak’s wealth and schooling against him. This son of immigrants became a millionaire by working hard and then a prospective billionaire by marrying well.

I could understand someone like Corbyn making hay out of this, but an aspiring Tory prime minister? Since when do Tories attack people for going to a public school and then making a lot of money? Since the Tory Party stopped being a Tory Party, I suppose.

I’m surprised Truss didn’t ask Sunak if he knew how much a pint of milk costs, although I’m sure he must have looked it up not to fall into that bog standard trap.  

As a backdrop to this, a supposedly conservative paper ran a whole feature about the £3,500 suits and £400 shoes Sunak wears. The implication was that such sartorial excesses mean he is out of touch with the poor people who know the price of milk without having to look it up.

I do hope next time Mr Sunak will have the good sense to turn up wearing torn jeans and a legible T-shirt, ideally saying “Two World Wars, one World Cup, so fuck off”. That would establish his patriotism, populist credentials and an ability to appeal to the burgeoning segment of the electorate.

Meanwhile, he attacked Miss Truss’s proposals as economically illiterate, while being rather reticent about his own. She in turn called him a “bean counter” whose economic ideas, whatever they are, would push Britain into a recession.

A friend of mine, who, unlike me, is a member of the Tory Party, asked my advice on how she should vote. I suggested a coin toss, taking off the mothballs my stock phrase I keep for such occasions: the evil of two lessers.

But let’s be fair: for all I know, both candidates may be great statesmen, whose ideas will rejuvenate Britain, turn her into an economic powerhouse and a bastion of freedom while, most important, enabling her to cock a snook at the EU.

It’s just that a silly show like that isn’t going to let them reveal such a potential, in the unlikely event they have it. Having taken part in many debates, if less momentous ones, I know that the only gift it takes to win one is that of the gab.

These aren’t intellectual contests played by strict rhetorical rules and designed to arrive at truth. Our political debates are shrill slanging matches long on irrelevant ad hominems and short on serious arguments.

The candidates’ record in the offices they held in the past isn’t much help either. Truss’s record as Trade Secretary was better than Sunak’s as Chancellor, but her tasks were easier. He had to contend with Covid and a prime minister hellbent on buying people’s votes with their own money.

Looking at the scraps of information the two candidates do provide on their economic plans, I can confidently predict a resounding victory for Labour in two years’ time. From what I can gather, Sunak wants to increase both taxes and spending, while Truss plans to lower the former but raise the latter.

A recession may well ensue whoever wins, but a high inflation rate is worse than any recession because it inculcates suicidal economic habits. Since both candidates propose to hike public spending, inflation will continue its crippling rise whoever wins – and so will the national debt.

We are already paying some £80 billion a year to service it, which too drives the inflation rate upwards because we have to take on more debt to service the existing one. But courtesy of Keynesian economists, who dominate both in government and the academy, we have little fear of a runaway public debt.

“We owe it to ourselves” is the fallacy making the rounds. That nonsense already existed in Adam Smith’s time, who cited it as an example of “the sophistry of the mercantile system”. Above all, it’s not even true: we owe it to the money markets, which charge interest.

As far as I’m concerned, little separates the two candidates in their economic thought. Perhaps sensing that, Sunak slyly pointed out that most Tory voters are Leavers and, unlike Truss, he had voted the right way.

But here’s a paradox that, if you look at it closely, isn’t at all paradoxical. Most Tory Leavers support Truss even though she voted Remain; while the Remainers are solidly behind the Leaver Sunak.

The reason is that they know how little principles mean to either candidate. They suspect both Sunak and Truss would campaign to rejoin the EU or even join the Russian Federation if they thought there were votes in it.

So yes, it’s back to my coin toss suggestion. Heads, Labour wins. Tails, Labour wins. And if the coin lands on edge and stays there, we’ll have a real Tory government.