Conservative Party has given up on governing

I’m now covid negative but not clear of the after effects so on medical advice I haven’t been travelling to London during the recent extreme temperatures. At the time of writing I’m hoping it will be safe for me to go down for the second half of this week.

Since my last post over fifty government ministers have resigned, including several who had been in post for only a few days. To add insult to injury the Government confirmed that they were all entitled to three months of their ministerial salary as severance pay – a minimum of £16,000.

It emerged that the Prime Minister planned to host a belated wedding reception in his luxury mansion at Chequers which is paid for by the taxpayer. He was eventually forced to drop this plan but last weekend he missed a meeting of the Government’s “COBRA” emergency committee, to prepare for the Red Alert extreme heat warnings this week, because he was having a party at Chequers.

While the party of government thinks a leadership contest is all that matters they have given up on actually governing. At least four important select committee meetings were cancelled at short notice because ministers decided they were too busy to attend. The White Paper on reforming the Gambling Act has been delayed till after the summer recess. The government have also announced that the Online Safety Bill will not complete its passage through the House of Commons until September at the earliest, and the long overdue Economic Crime Bill won’t even be published before then.

The Government have, however, made sure there was time before Recess to bring in legislation to allow agency workers to be brought in to replace striking workers (despite the fact that several of the UK’s biggest employment agencies were against this), and to press ahead with plans to tear up the EU Exit agreement and the Northern Ireland peace process.