I’ve dipped in and out of the Conservative party conference this week, although it’s been mainly out. But when I’ve found myself watching, it feels like the world, or at least a part of it, has gone mad.
Take yesterday. The minister for the Victorian age, Jacob Rees-Mogg, announced that the world’s first nuclear fission power plant will be built in North Nottinghamshire. This, proclaimed Tory MP Ben Bradley, was “a multi-billion pound investment in producing carbon-free nuclear energy on a commercial scale, so that North Notts can power the country once again.” I am not an expert on nuclear fission so I searched out the views of those who are experts, and guess what? The technology does not exist. Perhaps, Rees-Mogg was merely expressing the view that one day the world’s first nuclear fission plant would be built in North Notts, but that isn’t what he said. Either he was being deliberately misleading – perish the thought – or he didn’t understand the subject matter. My guess is it’s a little of both.
Then, I came across a photograph of the Conservative Friends of the NHS stall at the conference. As you can see, it’s not in very good shape. A bit like the NHS really. It’s been abandoned.
Our prime minister Liz Truss – even typing out these words feels totally surreal – has said she doesn’t being unpopular, which is probably just as well because everything she says and does puts another few points on Labour’s total in the opinion polls. After having abandoned part of her so-called plan to cut taxes for the very rich, Truss has decided to seek out new heights of unpopularity by “not ruling out” further increases to the retirement age. “Not ruling out” means this is what she wants to do. It’s political kite-flying. For those of us who have already had years of retirement pension stolen from us – my partner has had seven years stolen from her already – this is not, I suspect a potential vote-winner. Already, many thousands of us have abandoned the job market long before our official pension was due and since Covid I feel that this will only begin to accelerate as time goes by. I quit full time work some seven years before my stated pension date and I’ll never regret it. The lost wages are only money, after all.
None of this nonsense appears to have bothered delegates at the conference, who as you can see below, were fired-up with great enthusiasm. I suspect the inevitable rise in the pension age won’t affect many of them.
What I really want is a period of stability, where things aren’t subject to constant change for change’s sake. But Truss doesn’t feel the same. “Whenever there is change, there is disruption,” she announces in her usual tin-eared way. So, it’s going to be more of the same. A rolling shambles until Truss finally runs out of steam, which despite her recent elevation to Number 10 actually doesn’t feel too far away.
