LIKE A PUPPET ON A STRING: Rupert the Kingmaker has declared Liz Truss to be the next PM. Usually, the Home Secretary is next in line to the throne, but it appears that Priti Patel is beyond the pale even by Murdoch’s standards.
If Truss does indeed become Prime Minister, she will be permanently dogged by the Liz Truss Pork Markets meme. At least we will know what the abbreviation ‘PM’ stands for, and it isn’t Prime Minister.
Where does this leave Patel? The rottweiler of the cabinet, her national security brief has been interpreted as pickin’ on anyone who can’t bite back. It’s a mystery how she ever acquired a reputation for bullyin’.
But at least Patel has convictions, revoltin’ though they may be. She isn’t goin’ to do what Uncle Rupes tells her. Unlike Truss, whose convictions change with the wind, and what Murdoch really needs is a shallow opportunist whose reputation hasn’t yet been trashed.
This is where Truss scores over Johnson, a man with no convictions whatsoever, but a massive ego and overwhelming self interest. He’s a man who missed his true calling as a pub bore.
What will happen to Johnson? Will his fall bring down the whole house of cards? Only if Johnson goes rogue and spills the beans. But that’s unlikely. Its more probable that he will have a sympathetic journalist ghost write a self-justifying autobiography, while writing bollocks for the Daily Telegraph.
Although it’s quite possible he might finally acquire some convictions, albeit criminal ones.
Ultimately Truss will be discarded too, when the inherent contradictions of delivering something long promised but fundamentally impossible become clear. But this is what happens when a single issue party Takes Back Control. A party of simple minded ideologues in charge of a complex set of challenges.
Still, experts? Like Murdoch? What do they know?