Podcasts as competitors to books, offering a form of auditory reading, can leave a listener spoiled for choice. A top draw current affairs contender has to be The News Agents.
Since Being Human last went to press, significant changes have occurred in the British political landscape. A new government and Prime Minister are in place. The Conservative Party was hammered in the July general election as it faced a tsunami of resentment at its perceived misgovernment.
Arguably, the Conservative Party implosion was set in motion by the behaviour not of the Tory Prime minister ousted by Starmer, Rishi Sunak, but by two previous incumbents of the highest office in the land, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Their endeavours bequeathed Sunak a government of such rotten wood that nothing useful could be carved from it.
Of the two, Truss managed a meagre 49 days in Number 10, the shortest incumbency of any prime minister since 1721 when the office was first created.
The News Agents interviewed the author of a recent book Truss At Ten: How Not To Be Prime Minister. Anthony Seldon has produced biographies on all British PMs since John Major and is widely regarded as the leading authority in the genre.
Truss, an ardent admirer of Reagan and Thatcher and their free-market monetarist policies, on being elected Prime Minister quickly moved to craft an austerity package aimed at cutting a 72 billion sterling deficit.
While claiming his book had many revelations the most striking according to Seldon was the fiasco around the Truss emergency budget which saw civil servants produce a list of options, one of which included the NHS jettisoning its cancer treatment. A true believer who worshipped at the altar of unbridled capital, Truss continuously shouting ‘we have got to find the cuts’, so frightened her officials into suspecting she might intend wielding the scalpel against the most ill of citizens, they came up with an alternative plan.
Humanism, if it is to mean anything, must aim to protect human beings from such tender monetarist mercies.
Since Being Human last went to press, significant changes have occurred in the British political landscape. A new government and Prime Minister are in place. The Conservative Party was hammered in the July general election as it faced a tsunami of resentment at its perceived misgovernment.
Arguably, the Conservative Party implosion was set in motion by the behaviour not of the Tory Prime minister ousted by Starmer, Rishi Sunak, but by two previous incumbents of the highest office in the land, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Their endeavours bequeathed Sunak a government of such rotten wood that nothing useful could be carved from it.
Of the two, Truss managed a meagre 49 days in Number 10, the shortest incumbency of any prime minister since 1721 when the office was first created.
The News Agents interviewed the author of a recent book Truss At Ten: How Not To Be Prime Minister. Anthony Seldon has produced biographies on all British PMs since John Major and is widely regarded as the leading authority in the genre.
Truss, an ardent admirer of Reagan and Thatcher and their free-market monetarist policies, on being elected Prime Minister quickly moved to craft an austerity package aimed at cutting a 72 billion sterling deficit.
While claiming his book had many revelations the most striking according to Seldon was the fiasco around the Truss emergency budget which saw civil servants produce a list of options, one of which included the NHS jettisoning its cancer treatment. A true believer who worshipped at the altar of unbridled capital, Truss continuously shouting ‘we have got to find the cuts’, so frightened her officials into suspecting she might intend wielding the scalpel against the most ill of citizens, they came up with an alternative plan.
Humanism, if it is to mean anything, must aim to protect human beings from such tender monetarist mercies.
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| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
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