Who Is Really Running The Country & What Is Their Mandate For Doing So?
In a little covered announcement last week, Jeremy Hunt was installed as Chairman of the Cabinet’s Home Affairs Committee, a Cabinet committee dealing with most Home Affairs matters, but which doesn’t include the Prime Minister. The Home Secretary is a subordinate member of the Committee so any proposals she comes up with presumably have to go through Hunt first. He was already a prominent member of the Domestic and Economic Affairs Committee that deals with economic, trade, business and agriculture matters. Now crucially, energy, climate and net zero have been added to it’s remit following the dissolution of the Climate Committee.
The continued rise of Hunt, probably one of the most deeply unpopular politicians in the UK, is curious. A lot of his most recent notoriety comes from a creepy interview in 2020 where he positively extolled the merits of the Chinese Communist Party’s lockdown measures, including making a point about them putting his sister in a sealed room for 2 weeks with guards posted outside when she arrived back in the country in 2020.
He was definitively rejected in two Conservative leadership elections, trailing in a long way last in the most recent one (I’m discounting the manouvering of Sunak into number 10 and the mysterious last minute withdrawal of Johnson from that race - though that indeed only adds to the mystery). Then when the new Truss administration was unravelling Hunt, despite hardly being a known Truss supporter, was suddenly installed from nowhere as her new Chancellor. Then when Sunak’s coup, for that effectively was what it amounted to, succeeded in getting Sunak into number 10, his first move was to confirm Hunt was staying as Chancellor, then the current moves allowing him to accumulate the leading Cabinet Committee roles listed above.
Meanwhile what of Hunt’s notional master, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? Having initially declared that he was too busy to go to COP27, he then not only changes his mind at the 11th hour but makes an extraordinary declaration and commitment.
On the brink of when Hunt is about to announce his eye watering taxation increases and cuts to public spending, Sunak declares from COP27 a commitment for the UK to spend £11.6bn on “Climate Finance”, £1.5bn for Pakistan & Somalia, £65.5m for Kenya & Egypt, £150m on the Congo & Amazon, £65.5m on Clean Energy Innovation and £3bn on Nairobi’s Railway City & Hydro Power project.
This apparently is being done in the name of “Climate Justice”, a loaded term being used to justify the countries at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution having a historic liability to pay compensation for the Third World countries who were left behind. The reality however is that the Industrial Revolution gave us the means by which the modern world can exist, the capacity to produce modern energy, the digital economy, consumer goods, manufacturing, international travel, the meeting of medical needs, and much else. And if anyone bore the brunt, it was the people, including children, in Britain working very long arduous hours in coal and tin mines, woollen and cotton mills, iron and steel works and other manufacturing industries. If anything the British are owed a debt of thanks not vilification.
However by agreeing to the fake “Climate Reparations” narrative and without even a sniff of a debate about it in the UK itself, Sunak leaves the UK open to financing all kinds of dubious liabilities in the future to an unlimited extent by letting this particular genie out of the bag instead of definitively rejecting it.
Be ready in years to come for the usual political weasel words about international agreements and treaty obligations being quoted so that this subject, just like the numerous “migration pacts” become untouchable policies which can never be rolled back, regardless of the circumstances. But then why would Sunak himself care about the UK’s future and it’s commitments. A man with family origins in other countries, has had a prized “green card” to live and work in the USA for some years, whose wife has enjoyed non domiciliary status in the UK and owns a property in California. Is a person with such an international background ever likely to feel the same attachment to the UK as the rest of us when he can easily hop on a plane and live elsewhere in foreign properties he already owns? I wonder.
Don’t expect any respite from a future Labour Government either. They were at the forefront of those calling for Sunak to attend COP27 and if anything, would want to outdo the current administration in chucking our money away.
Technically this Government is entitled to govern for as long as it commands a majority in the House of Commons until the final date for another General Election arrives. However it is making very, far reaching decisions about our lifestyles and future prosperity that were never issues at the last General Election. And it is compounded by it being a Government composed of very different personnel in senior posts to those who were at the last General Election.
There may be no troops on the streets but a coup has basically taken place in everything but name. An administration not in post at the last general election, with a leader not elected by it’s own party members, carrying out draconian policies for which it has no mandate, that will make us all poorer for years to come. Is it all really at the behest solely of a majority of the Parliamentary Conservative Party or are there other forces at work. And who does Hunt derive his power from. I wonder.