Chaos unleashed on British government

All the whole of last week it was a regular bedlam unleashed at Westminster, the seat of the British government, rising to a crescendo on Wednesday when Liz Truss, the Prime Minister, announced her resignation. It has been a week of tumult for Liz Truss that had just assumed the office less than a month away during another fiasco when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to leave. She’ll be the fourth prime minister to resign from office within the short period of 12 years. That would be unprecedented for a Conservative Party-led government. In the last 40 or so years, the Conservative Party had enjoyed strong and stable leadership. 

Many in the party would fondly remember that throughout the 1980s, when they were in power at Westminster, they had only Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. I was living in the UK as a postgraduate student at Swansea University College in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher came to power in very similar circumstances to today’s. The country, then, was struggling with inflation and strikes by the major unions, especially the all-important ones like the coal miners’ union. This was worsened by violence orchestrated by separatists’ agitations from Northern Ireland. The new leader stood firm introducing tough spending cuts and daring the unions to do their worst. Thatcher’s early 1980s measures would just be similar to what Truss tried to foist on the country without success. 

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Many would agree that what had befallen the Conservative Party today is a great pity. It is unexpected if one considers that Boris Johnson had led them to a landslide electoral victory in 2019, roundly defeating their closest rival, the Labour Party, with an 80-seat majority. Within the space of a few years, they have fretted away that success and if elections are held today it is predicted they will lose to the Labour Party by a very wide margin. If one could borrow from the wisecracks of that PDP grandee, Bode George, while answering questions on the lamentable situation the PDP has found itself in, he said: ‘it looks like some kind of devil has entered our party’s midst.’ From my perspective, nothing can be more apt to describe the muddled-up state of affairs in the UK Conservative Party, the party in government now.  

Liz Truss came into No 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister, at one of the lowest moments in the life of the country in recent times. Galloping inflation, run-away mortgage rates, rising energy bills, and worst of all a failing currency were the order of the day. She could have stabilised the situation by cushioning the hardships of the majority by raising taxes here and there to garner revenues. 

Unfortunately, she worsened matters by immediately presenting a mini-budget that prominently reduced taxes and hoped to balance the budget by borrowing. This exacerbated the situation so much that it irked the market to react negatively sending the pound sterling spiralling to a 40-year low. It did not help matters that Liz Truss adamantly refused to see what was deficient in the budget until the market manifested its rejection.  

It was with great reluctance that she had to dismiss the Chancellor of the Exchequer, her very close friend, and ideological soul-mate, Kwasi Kwarteng. It took the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, only a few days to identify and throw out most of the contentious items in the mini-budget and restore some calm in the market. Even this acceptance of defeat which translated into ideological self-immolation was not enough to save the neck of the prime minister. The budget was in tatters and had to be stood down. Liz Truss was so traumatised by the rapid loss of power that she failed to gather the courage to face the taunts of the opposition in parliament. Finally buffeted from all corners, especially from her parliamentary caucus, she had to throw in the towel and resign. 

Our budding democracy can pick some important lessons from these events. Many of us that have followed the heated happenings would be amazed at how the British politicians hustled in the hustings, the Parliament, and the media without shedding blood. Debates are routinely carried out passionately allowing lofty ideas to clash and when one of the parties realised that its ideas and policies are not acceptable then they withdraw to give way. Those of us who are clamouring for the parliamentary system can  also see how intense it is and question whether our fractious public service can withstand similar situations.  

The leadership contest is presently on among the conservative party members of parliament and by the end of the week, a Prime Minister could emerge. The front runner is Rishi Sunak who is of Indian origin. We are watching with batted breaths how things are unfolding.  

Re: How Gwoza excelled in education 

In the piece titled above, published two weeks ago, I made mention of Dr Asabe Vilita Bashir among the Gwoza pioneers in scholarship and public service, as a member of the House of Representatives. She had represented her constituency in the Borno State House of Assembly and the House of Representatives, but she is now the Director-General of the National Centre for Women Development, Abuja.