{"id":16001,"date":"2024-03-08T12:41:06","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T12:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=16001"},"modified":"2024-03-25T09:59:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T09:59:03","slug":"sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunak’s day of two (poor) speeches"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The marmalade dropper – a technical term – came as I caught up with Rishi Sunak\u2019s speech to the Scottish Conservative Conference in Aberdeen on March 1, or more specifically the Q and A afterwards.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Douglas Ross asked what many might regard as a softball question about the Scottish government\u2019s failure to dual the A9, the Prime Minister gave an irritated giggle. \u201cYou\u2019re testing my geography slightly, Douglas,\u201d he replied.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He seemed more comfortable on ferries. The big speech concluded with a fact-free rant in which Sunak claimed the SNP wants to \u201cliterally turn back the clock 300 years\u201d and that the Scottish Government provides \u201cstill no ferries for the islands!\u201d I imagine many Scots see the same analysis of the Unionist media on social channels that I do and so that they know Scotland\u2019s ferry service compares pretty well <\/span><\/a>on cost and reliability with other developed countries which have many inhabited islands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunak\u2019s claim that the Conservatives are the friend of Scottish energy doesn\u2019t bear much scrutiny either – the UK\u2019s investment in the transition to green energy has fallen <\/span><\/a>at a time when the EU and US are pushing through with it. The windfall tax they introduced in 2022 and extended this week also has super deductions for extracting hard-to-reach oil – but nothing for investment in renewables. This failure of investment is hugely damaging to the future of the energy sector in the North East and the rest of Scotland. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know about anyone else, but I have had more than enough of this Conservative government and I wish they would just get on with it and call an election. Are they going to drag on into the autumn? Why? Do Conservative MPs looking at losing their seats want that? Isn\u2019t it better if they pull the plaster off quickly instead of peering at it and wincing for six more months?<\/span><\/p>\n

The pundits say they will keep going hoping that something will turn up. Really? What is going to turn up that is going to wash away the damned spots of what they already did – i.e. Brexit. The UK is sliding back to being the sick man of Europe that it was before joining the EU in the 1970s. All the denial in the world won\u2019t make that go away – the lady doth protest too much.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is George Galloway the thing they were hoping for? After flying back to London from Aberdeen, the PM made a strange speech in Downing Street the same day, calling for national unity, and alluding to the new Member for Rochdale. What was that about?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On Newsnight<\/em> that evening, the Spectator\u2019s Katy Balls opined that this actually makes it more likely that the PM will postpone the general election, because he hopes to benefit from George Galloway\u2019s attacks on Keir Starmer. Was the PM really saying\u00a0 – \u201cI want to exaggerate the threat this pork-pie hatted bam presents in order to embarrass Labour?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If there is anything more likely to make this ghastly Parliament more dysfunctional it is Galloway, apologist and dogsbody for authoritarian regimes everywhere. This is what he had to say <\/span><\/a>about Tucker Carlson\u2019s fawning interview with Vladimir Putin: \u201cOnce people see it they will realise they have been lied to\u2026He [Putin] is not Vlad the Mad or Vlad the Bad but he is the extremely popular President of a very important country.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The horrific situation in Gaza indeed gets worse by the day. The US President Joe Biden is starring to look pathetic as he bleats from the sidelines. Why doesn\u2019t the US deliver aid by ship? (Ed: Biden has just announced it will). Instead, the US has started dropping aid from planes, which is more like something out of the\u00a0 \u201cHunger Games\u201d than an actual plan – you can\u2019t drop aid to feed millions of people from the air in an area the size of Manhattan. And the UK continues to use its seat on the UN Security Council to abstain on calls for a ceasefire – the only country to take that position. Abstention is not leadership.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunak\u2019s speech in Downing Street was an abject failure to even make sense. It sounded like it was written by Chat GPT on an off day. If it really was an attempt to reap party political advantage indirectly from the misery of Gazans – then it was breathtakingly cynical.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After five years of this Conservative government, the UK has ended up with a Prime Minister it did not elect. He didn\u2019t even beat Liz Truss in a ballot of members of the Conservative Party. It is an open secret that the British people will reject him and his party as soon as they are allowed the opportunity.\u00a0Waiting for a few months won\u2019t change that. <\/span><\/p>\n

First published on the author’s A letter from Scotland<\/a> newsletter in Substack<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Bring on the election and put us out of our misery, urges one of our regular columnists in a partially updated piece written before this week’s UK Budget which has apparently failed to turn the dial for the Tories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":14910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120,319,644,196,15,125,12],"tags":[36,23],"class_list":["post-16001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brexit","category-economy","category-energy","category-environment","category-features","category-politics","category-uk","tag-scottish-government","tag-scottish-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nSunak's day of two (poor) speeches - Sceptical Scot Staging Site<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sunak's day of two (poor) speeches - Sceptical Scot Staging Site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Bring on the election and put us out of our misery, urges one of our regular columnists in a partially updated piece written before this week's UK Budget which has apparently failed to turn the dial for the Tories.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sceptical Scot Staging Site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-03-08T12:41:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-25T09:59:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/sunak2-e1709901360586.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"334\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jackie Kemp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jackie Kemp\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/\",\"name\":\"Sunak's day of two (poor) speeches - Sceptical Scot Staging Site\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/sunak2-e1709901360586.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-03-08T12:41:06+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-03-25T09:59:03+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/#\/schema\/person\/27c11a93e4a08cb94ec9869c147373c5\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/sunak2-e1709901360586.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/sunak2-e1709901360586.jpg\",\"width\":500,\"height\":334},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2024\/03\/sunaks-day-of-two-poor-speeches\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Sunak’s day of two (poor) speeches\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/\",\"name\":\"Sceptical Scot Staging Site\",\"description\":\"Asking Questions. 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