You’ve no mandate for this! Letter to Sheryll Murray

Meme by Sadie Parker

Dear Sheryll Murray, 

I see that Kwasi Kwarteng, the least competent chancellor in living memory, has gone against all sensible economic advice and announced fiscal policies that almost instantly tanked the pound. 

Please tell me your thoughts on a tax cut for the highest earners, whilst the absolute majority of your constituents will get almost nothing at a time when the cost of living is through the roof. How will you frame this budget that only benefits the top 10 per cent of earners come election time to those struggling to pay rent or heat their homes?

What is more, many people in Cornwall are on part-time, low paid jobs which have to be subsidised by benefits because there are no alternative jobs out there; so do tell me how you will explain away the threat to cut benefits. If Mr Kwarteng wanted to genuinely cut the benefits bill then he would have introduced legislation that forced employers to pay a genuine living wage, then it would be unnecessary for the taxpayers to subsidise their profits by paying benefits to those who are on poverty-line pay.

This is class war. Simply telling someone to “get a better” job when there are no better jobs is crass at best and wilfully stupid at worst. It’s like telling someone with end stage cancer to just “think positively and get better”. 

Do you perhaps think that those who voted for you are stupid enough to fall for this nonsense? Or do you simply not care as long as you keep your own above inflation pay rises, plus an extremely generous expense account on which you charge more per annum to the taxpayer than your average constituents earn in several years?

It is very telling that the ERG prime minister and her cabinet introduced the budget and within moments those investors to whom it was meant to appeal made a run on the pound and reduced it to to a value that it last saw when I was a literal foetus in 1985. If the investors, economists and foreign governments can see that the fiscal ideas taken directly from that poorly-researched book “Britannia Unchained” won’t work, then why can Ms Truss and her cronies not see this? Are they being wilfully stupid or do they actually want to see Britain fail? 

Ms Truss has no mandate for any of the policies that she is introducing. Nobody voted for them and they were in no manifesto. They are directly harmful to the environment (fracking), public services(un-costed tax cuts) and people’s livelihoods (further driving inflation and increasing inequality). The fact that the pound has nosedived against the dollar (in which our energy is priced on the world’s markets) will increase inflation and act as a catalyst to the already catastrophic cost of living crisis that government inaction has forced upon us.

It is time for an election. Enough is enough. You are taking us for mugs and if you refuse to challenge this latest attack on those you supposedly represent, then it’s time you stepped aside and let a competent MP take your post. 

Carl Garner