Tag: hes

‘Sorry, Ron, you’re No. 2’: Sununu says he’s the top dog among conservative governors

[ad_1]

“I’m ranked the most fiscally conservative governor in the country,” Sununu, who is considering a 2024 presidential bid, told POLITICO’s Lisa Kashinsky. “I’m No. 1 in personal freedoms. Sorry, Ron, you’re No. 2,” he added, a jab at the Florida governor, considered a frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“I would challenge anyone on Second Amendment rights. We’re far and away the best, you know, because we believe in those individual freedoms. Regulatory reform, I’ll challenge any state on it,” Sununu added.
Sununu acknowledged that he may be “more moderate” on social issues. But on those issues, New Hampshire has “better results than almost anywhere else,” he said.
“I would challenge anyone on conservative credentials.”
Sununu, a New England moderate in the party of MAGA, has positioned himself as a Trump alternative who still carries the conservative mantle. And while he holds an advantage with New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation status for the presidential primary calendar, it’s unclear what his path would be beyond that.
To that point, Sununu took shots at Democratic Party plans to strip New Hampshire of it’s calendar pole position, calling the move “a complete fool’s errand,” and saying the plan to bestow that status on South Carolina would open President Joe Biden up to primary attacks.
“He’s really opened … himself up for challengers,” Sununu said. “And I firmly believe there will be challengers.”
“They’re gonna have to let it play out. But there’s no doubt someone will step in and be a real challenger to Biden, because he tried to move the primary away from [New Hampshire],” Sununu said.

[ad_2]
#Ron #youre #Sununu #hes #top #dog #among #conservative #governors
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
Heads roll in Ukraine graft purge, but defense chief Reznikov rejects rumors he’s out

[ad_1]

KYIV — Heads are rolling in President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s expanding purge against corruption in Ukraine, but Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov is denying rumors that he’s destined for the exit — a move that would be viewed as a considerable setback for Kyiv in the middle of its war with Russia.
Two weeks ago, Ukraine was shaken by two major corruption scandals centered on government procurement of military catering services and electrical generators. Rather than sweeping the suspect deals under the carpet, Zelenskyy launched a major crackdown, in a bid to show allies in the U.S. and EU that Ukraine is making a clean break from the past.
Tetiana Shevchuk, a lawyer with the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a watchdog, said Zelenskyy needed to draw a line in the sand: “Because even when the war is going on, people saw that officials are conducting ‘business as usual’. They saw that corrupt schemes have not disappeared, and it made people really angry. Therefore, the president had to show he is on the side of fighting against corruption.”
Since the initial revelations, the graft investigations have snowballed, with enforcers uncovering further possible profiteering in the defense ministry. Two former deputy defense ministers have been placed in pre-trial detention.
Given the focus on his ministry in the scandal, speculation by journalists and politicians has swirled that Reznikov — one of the best-known faces of Ukraine’s war against the Russian invaders — is set to be fired or at least transferred to another ministry.
But losing such a top name would be a big blow. At a press conference on Sunday, Reznikov dismissed the claims about his imminent departure as rumors and said that only Zelenskyy was in a position to remove him. Although Reznikov admits the anti-corruption department at his ministry failed and needs reform, he said he was still focused on ensuring that Ukraine’s soldiers were properly equipped.
“Our key priority now is the stable supply of Ukrainian soldiers with all they need,” Reznikov said during the press conference.
Despite his insistence that any decision on his removal could only come from Zelenskyy, Reznikov did still caution that he was ready to depart — and that no officials would serve in their posts forever.

The speculation about Reznikov’s fate picked up on Sunday when David Arakhamia, head of Zelenskyy’s affiliated Servant of the People party faction in the parliament, published a statement saying Reznikov would soon be transferred to the position of minister for strategic industries to strengthen military-industrial cooperation. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, current head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, would head the Ministry of Defense, Arakhamia said.
However, on Monday, Arakhamia seemed to row back somewhat, and claimed no reshuffle in the defense ministry was planned for this week. Mariana Bezuhla, deputy head of the national security and defense committee in the Ukrainian parliament, also said that the parliament had decided to postpone any staff decisions in the defense ministry as they consider the broader risks for national defense ahead of another meeting of defense officials at the U.S. Ramstein air base in Germany and before an expected upcoming Russian offensive.
Zelenskyy steps in
The defense ministry is not the only department to be swept up in the investigations. Over the first days of February, the Security Service of Ukraine, State Investigation Bureau, and Economic Security Bureau conducted dozens of searches at the customs service, the tax service and in local administrations. Officials of several different levels were dismissed en masse for sabotaging their service during war and hurting the state.
“Unfortunately, in some areas, the only way to guarantee legitimacy is by changing leaders along with the implementation of institutional changes,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on February 1. “I see from the reaction in society that people support the actions of law enforcement officers. So, the movement towards justice can be felt. And justice will be ensured.”
Yuriy Nikolov, founder of the Nashi Groshi (Our Money) investigative website, who broke the story about the defense ministry’s alleged profiteering on food and catering services for soldiers in January, said the dismissals and continued searches were first steps in the right direction.
“Now let’s wait for the court sentences. It all looked like a well-coordinated show,” Nikolov told POLITICO.  “At the same time, it is good that the government prefers this kind of demonstrative fight against corruption, instead of covering up corrupt officials.”
Still, even though Reznikov declared zero tolerance for corruption and admitted that defense procurement during war needs reform, he has still refused to publish army price contract data on food and non-secret equipment, Nikolov said.
During his press conference, Reznikov insisted he could not reveal sensitive military information during a period of martial law as it could be used by the enemy. “We have to maintain the balance of public control and keep certain procurement procedures secret,” he said.
Two deputies down
Alleged corruption in secret procurement deals has, however, already cost him two of his deputies.
Deputy Defense Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, who oversaw logistical support for the army, tendered his resignation in January following a scandal involving the purchase of military rations at inflated prices. In his resignation letter, Shapovalov asked to be dismissed in order “not to pose a threat to the stable supply of the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a result of a campaign of accusations related to the purchase of food services.”
Another of Reznikov’s former deputies, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who managed defense procurement in the ministry until December, was also arrested over accusations he lobbied for a purchase of 3,000 poor-quality bulletproof vests for the army worth more than 100 million hryvnias (€2.5 million), the Security Service of Ukraine reported.  If found guilty he faces up to eight years in prison. The director of the company that supplied the bulletproof vests under the illicit contract has been identified as a suspect by the authorities and now faces up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.
Both ex-officials can be released on bail.
Another unnamed defense ministry official, a non-staff adviser to the deputy defense minister of Ukraine, was also identified as a suspect in relation to the alleged embezzlement of 1.7 billion hryvnias (€43 million) from the defense budget, the General Prosecutors Office of Ukraine reported.
When asked about corruption cases against former staffers, Reznikov stressed people had to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Reputational risk
At the press conference on Sunday, Reznikov claimed that during his time in the defense ministry, he managed to reorganize it, introduced competition into food supplies and filled empty stocks.
However, the anti-corruption department of the ministry completely failed, he admitted. He argued the situation in the department was so unsatisfactory that the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption gave him an order to conduct an official audit of employees. And it showed the department had to be reorganized.
“At a closed meeting with the watchdogs and investigative journalists I offered them to delegate people to the reloaded anti-corruption department. We also agreed to create a public anti-corruption council within the defense ministry,” Reznikov said.
Nikolov was one of the watchdogs attending the closed meeting. He said the minister did not bring any invoices or receipts for food products for the army, or any corrected contract prices to the meeting. Moreover, the minister called the demand to reveal the price of an egg or a potato “an idiocy” and said prices should not be published at all, Nikolov said in a statement. Overpriced eggs were one of the features of the inflated catering contracts that received particular public attention.
Reznikov instead suggested creating an advisory body with the public. He would also hold meetings, and working groups, and promised to provide invoices upon request, the journalist added.
“So far, it looks like the head of state, Zelenskyy, has lost patience with the antics of his staff, but some of his staff do not want to leave their comfort zone and are trying to leave some corruption options for themselves for the future,” Nikolov said.
Reznikov was not personally accused of any wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies.
But the minister acknowledged that there was reputational damage in relation to his team and communications. “This is a loss of reputation today, it must be recognized and learned from,” he said. At the same time, he believed he had nothing to be ashamed of: “My conscience is absolutely clear,” he said.

[ad_2]
#Heads #roll #Ukraine #graft #purge #defense #chief #Reznikov #rejects #rumors #hes
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 6, 2023
Trump hits the trail again, eager to show he’s still the GOP King Kong

[ad_1]

For months Trump has been tucked away at his resort in Palm Beach, where he has hosted parties, sent out missives on his social media site Truth Social, played golf, and plotted out his next steps.
When he re-emerged on Saturday, flying to New Hampshire on his rehabbed Trump-branded 757 plane, he was determined to showcase himself as a candidate who still has the star power that catapulted him to the White House in 2016, and could once again elbow out a full field of Republican challengers.
“They said ‘he’s not doing rallies, he is not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost his step,’” Trump said at a meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “I’m more angry now, and I’m more committed now than I ever was.”
Unlike 2020, when he ran unopposed as president, Trump is expected to have a field of Republican challengers to deal with this time around, beyond Haley. In anticipation of a crowded field, Trump’s campaign has compiled research on different potential candidates, according to an adviser. But Trump himself brushed off concerns that he is in danger of not securing the nomination. “I don’t think we have competition this time either, to be honest,” he said.
At the New Hampshire GOP meeting, Trump announced outgoing New Hampshire GOP Chair Stephen Stepanek would help oversee his campaign in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
And later in the day, at an appearance at the South Carolina statehouse, Trump is expected to announce endorsements from close ally and occasional golf buddy Sen. Lindsey Graham, and Republican Gov. Henry McMaster — a notable display of political muscle in Haley’s home state.
But Republican activists in New Hampshire are plainly divided. As Stepanek rejoins the Trump campaign, outgoing Vice Chair Pamela Tucker was recruiting volunteers for Ron to the Rescue, a super PAC formed after the midterms to boost Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if he runs for president.
“We’re not never-Trumpers. We’re people who supported Trump. We love Trump. But we also know, more importantly, that we need to win. And Ron DeSantis has proven it time and time again now he can win elections,” Tucker said in an interview.

Matt Mayberry, a former congressional candidate and past New Hampshire GOP vice chair who supported Trump and has appeared at rallies with him in the state, said he isn’t taking sides yet in the still-forming primary.
“Let them all come,” he said.
Walter Stapleton, a GOP state representative from Claremont, sat toward the back of the auditorium wearing a Trump hat. But he said he, too, was undecided as to whom he’s backing in 2024.
“We have to put a candidate there that can win and maybe draw some of the independents and some of the voters from the other side of the aisle. I think DeSantis is the runner for that,” Stapleton said. “But I’m always willing to see if Trump will change his tack … and come across more balanced and more reasonable.”
During his speech in New Hampshire, Trump doled out red meat to a friendly crowd. The crowd roared with applause when he said that, if elected, he would “eliminate federal funding for any school that pushes critical race theory or left-wing gender ideology,” and support “direct election of school principals by the parents.”
His speech in New Hampshire echoed policy prescriptions he has released over the past several weeks in the form of video addresses, on issues such as education and protecting Social Security and Medicare. His team has seen those pronouncements as a way to maneuver back onto the political stage without having to organize the signature rallies that defined Trump’s prior bids.
Saturday, however, was about preparing for life back on the trail. The day comes as Trump has dipped in recent polling from New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Despite those surveys, Trump — the only declared candidate — consistently leads in national polls against a field of potential challengers, including DeSantis, his former vice president Mike Pence, and former members of his cabinet, including Mike Pompeo and Haley.
Trump was joined Saturday by some familiar faces from his White House days, including social media guru Dan Scavino, political director Brian Jack, and Jason Miller, as well as his campaign’s new top lieutenants, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. The campaign has grown in recent months with a series of new hires and the establishment of a campaign headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, not far from Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago.
Along with staff from the Trump-allied Save America PAC, there are around 40 people working on Trump’s campaign, according to multiple advisers.
There is a push for the campaign to be scrappier than it was in 2020, when a massive operation worked out of a slick office building in Arlington, Virginia. And that ethos, according to an adviser, extends to how Trump will approach fundraising with a focus on small-dollar donations over big donor events.
The Trump campaign will still be working with longtime adviser Brad Parscale’s Nucleus to send out emails, and fellow GOP operative Gary Coby continues to handle digital communications for the campaign, such as text messaging. But the campaign is also working with an entirely new vendor in 2020 — Campaign Inbox — to help with digital fundraising.
Both Trump and his team seemed eager on Saturday to get back to the hustle and bustle of his time in the White House, and there were signals he has kept his same habits. Following Trump on the plane on Saturday were his assistants — Natalie Harp, the young OAN-anchor turned aide, and Walt Nauta, who carried a giant stack of newspapers on board for Trump to read through on the flight. Margo Martin, a former White House press aide who has worked for Trump in Florida since his 2020 loss, watched from the tarmac as Trump boarded the plane with a wave.
“We need a President who is ready to hit the ground running on day one, and boy am I hitting the ground running,” Trump said later in the day.
Lisa Kashinsky contributed reporting from New Hampshire.
[ad_2]
#Trump #hits #trail #eager #show #hes #GOP #King #Kong
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 29, 2023
Jeff Zients is Mr. Fix It. But he’s never had a slate of challenges like this.

[ad_1]
Taking the job in a newly divided Washington, Zients will inherit a series of trials:
– Fallout from the discovery of mishandled classified documents at Biden’s residence and former office, which has led to the appointment of a Department of Justice special counsel;
– A slim House Republican majority eager to use the power of the subpoena to launch a series of investigations into the president’s policies, conduct and the lives of those closest to him;
– The likelihood that the newly empowered hard right within the GOP will follow through on threats to play politics with the debt ceiling, endangering the nation’s fiscal health;
– Continued concerns that the economy, which has showed remarkable resilience to this point, could slide into a slowdown or recession;
– Fear that the war in Ukraine, which shows no signs of abating, will turn into a years-long conflict that could further strain U.S. resources and alliances.
All of those challenges will come against the backdrop of Biden’s expected announcement in the coming weeks that he will seek a second term, launching a campaign at the age of 80 that could set him up on a collision course, once more, with Donald Trump.
Zients, who was Biden’s first Covid coordinator, is expected within the White House to largely leave the politics to other senior aides. Though outgoing chief of staff Ron Klain had his hands in the legislative outreach as well, Zients will likely defer to top Biden aides Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Steve Ricchetti and others to handle that while he focuses on the West Wing’s operations and processes.

“He may not be the expert on every one of the 10 or 15 things that work its way into the Oval Office. But I guarantee you that, from what I’ve seen, there’s nobody better than Jeff to manage that,” said Anthony Fauci, Biden’s former top medical adviser who worked closely with Zients. “He knows who to call, who to trust, who to get involved with to see that it gets done.”
Zients’ first task will be to respond to GOP investigations into the classified documents and other matters. The slim Republican majority has previewed a robust slate of probes, including into the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal and border policies as well as the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter.
The White House has expressed a quiet confidence about the tests that lie ahead, comforted by the knowledge, aides said, that they have been there before.
Last week, the West Wing celebrated the president’s second anniversary in office and, in a series of social media posts, reflected on what the White House faced in January 2021. When Klain entered the building as Biden’s first chief of staff, the nation was only two weeks removed from the Jan. 6 insurrection and still at the height of the pandemic.
Biden aides think their strategy of ignoring Beltway chatter and focusing on governing led to a sweeping legislative track record, plaudits for Biden’s leadership in defending Ukraine and a surprisingly strong showing for Democrats in the midterms. The administration entered 2023 with real momentum, aides felt, and they don’t believe the document imbroglio will change that.
Still the task facing Zients won’t be easy, or familiar.
The last two times a president has brought him on board to handle a job it was to solve massive problems: Barack Obama enlisted him to solve the troubled healthcare.gov website and then Biden tapped him to run the pandemic response. This time, Zients has been given the task of keeping the White House out of trouble, not rescuing it from it.
Aides believe the strategy of staying the course will work again, even in the face of steady, potentially damaging revelations about classified documents. The steady drip, drip, drip of information led to the appointment of a special counsel and the matter has already become a political problem if not a legal one.
House Republicans have also begun rattling sabers over what will soon be Zients’ priorities. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in order to obtain enough votes to secure the gavel, has empowered a number of Republicans — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who have demanded that the United States cease or curtail aid to Ukraine, even as Kyiv has been warning about another major Russian offensive.
Moreover, those same extremist forces in the GOP have suggested not voting to raise the debt ceiling if the administration does not enact severe spending cuts. Economists have warned that even approaching a calamity — the debt limit will likely be reached in June — would severely wound the nation’s economy.
Though the House GOP seems certain to be a thorn in Zients’ side, the two years of Democratic control of Washington left Biden with a legislative record that has evoked comparisons to those put forth by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. And White House aides believe that for many voters, the year ahead will be defined not by Republican probes, but by the implementation of Biden’s accomplishments, including the infrastructure bill and the health care and climate change provisions that were part of 2022’s reconciliation package. Polls suggest that while voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the documents, his overall approval rating has changed little.
“President Biden is on the side of working families in standing against House Republicans’ unprecedented middle class tax increase, inflation-worsening tax giveaways for the rich, and legislation to raise gas prices,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
Looming over all of the challenges in Zients’ new inbox will be Biden’s announcement about 2024. Though some people close to the president say he has not fully made up his mind to run again, most in the White House expect Biden will announce his candidacy soon, potentially even next month, giving Zients the task of running a White House while coordinating a sprawling re-election campaign.
“Klain faced this unbelievably daunting menu of challenges during the first two years but now comes the hard part,” said Chris Whipple, who wrote the book “The Gatekeepers” about White House chiefs of staff. “Zients has got to manage the current classified documents furor but also put the right time in place and make sure the president is ready for the marathon to come.”
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
#Jeff #Zients #Fix #hes #slate #challenges
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 24, 2023
‘A f–king idiot’: Man who breached Pelosi suite says he’s guilty of bluster, not crime

[ad_1]

It was a climactic moment as a milestone Jan. 6 prosecution neared its conclusion. Barnett’s image at the desk in Pelosi’s office became a symbol of the brazenness of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the vulnerability of a key institution attempting to fulfill its responsibility to certify the 2020 election. The case was poised to head to the jury Friday afternoon, with a verdict likely early next week.
In lengthy, tense cross-examination, Gordon raised sharp doubts about key aspects of Barnett’s Jan. 6 story. Barnett contended that he climbed the center steps of the Capitol to gain a vantage point to find two friends who he lost in the chaos. He then claimed that he was “pushed” into the Capitol after getting stuck in a densely packed crowd near the rotunda doors. He said he roamed around the building merely looking for a bathroom, and found himself in Pelosi’s office suite.
Then, he claimed he got caught up in the moment and acted foolishly by posing for a photo at the desk of Pelosi aide Emily Berret. He claimed he took an envelope off Berret’s desk — meant for then-Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) – and left a quarter as compensation. He didn’t consider it theft, he said, because he paid for the envelope and removed it because he had bled all over it and wanted to remove the “biohazard.”
Gordon suggested in questioning that Barnett had ample opportunities to turn around and leave the Capitol before he entered the building and that he never once asked an officer for help finding a bathroom. And despite his purported concerns about the tainted envelope, he held onto it for days before throwing it, unsealed, onto the table in his interview with the FBI. The truth is, Gordon said, Barnett took the envelope as a “trophy.”
“You don’t know the truth, sir,” Barnett shot back.
Video evidence played during the trial showed Barnett waving the bloodstained envelope outside the Capitol, boasting about his jaunt inside Pelosi’s office suite and the note he left on her desk: “Nancy, Bigo was here, bi-otch.” Prosecutors noted that Barnett tried — while in jail for his alleged Jan. 6 crimes — to have his partner copyright the phrase.
Throughout his cross-examination, Barnett repeatedly spoke over Gordon’s questioning, often going on tangents or digressions that prompted admonishments from the judge and from Gordon. As Gordon’s questioning drew to a close, Barnett at times grew agitated with the pointed inquiries, saying he was “getting quite tired of it.”
“I ain’t breaking down,” Barnett said after a particularly tense exchange. “I’ve made mistakes. I went through hell up there. The officers went through hell up there. … I’m struggling with this.”

Gordon homed in on Barnett’s interaction with two police officers who sought to usher him from Pelosi’s suite. He yelled about “communism” during the first interaction, and during the second, he told the officer “We’re in a war. Pick a side. Don’t be on the wrong side or you’re going to get hurt.”
Barnett said he was just “blustering” and that he never meant he would be the one to hurt the officer.
Barnett’s defense attorneys emphasized that he is prone to hyperbole and had no criminal history, that he never committed violence inside the Capitol and turned himself in to law enforcement after driving home to Arkansas. In addition to Barnett’s testimony, his wife Tammy Newburn and his cousin Eileen Halpin testified on his behalf, describing him as a quirky, gregarious but well-liked member of his community.
Barnett began his testimony by indicating he regretted his actions toward Pelosi and for going to D.C. at all.
But prosecutors emphasized that Barnett repeatedly agitated against people who supported certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory, that he viewed “patriots” as people who opposed Biden’s election and repeatedly suggested he would do anything to prevent Biden from taking office.
[ad_2]
#fking #idiot #Man #breached #Pelosi #suite #hes #guilty #bluster #crime
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 21, 2023
This is levelling up Sunak-style – he’s first among the equally useless | Marina Hyde

[ad_1]
More than three years after malign fun-fur mascot Boris Johnson first gibbered out the catchphrase, we finally have incontrovertible evidence of what “levelling up” actually is. For its duration, Johnson’s government had a flagship policy that it couldn’t have defined even if it hadn’t been drunk on the contents of a wheelie suitcase. Levelling up now turns out to be a sort of inter-constituency Squid Game, in which MPs who voted for various stripes of self-harm are now forced into trial-by-combat against each other in the hope of appealing to the caprices of shadowy gamesmaster Michael Gove. Arguably there’s an ironic wit to the format – a sort of handout for the anti-handout party, designed solely to inadequately mitigate the effects of cuts made largely by that same party. The players seem quite upset about it now, but are of course free to terminate the game if the majority votes to do so.
Or as one Conservative MP who missed out fumed yesterday: “I’ve got shops without roofs and whole streets of boarded-up houses and some people are getting cash for adventure golf.” Which is, by coincidence, exactly the picture in the political glossary next to the phrase “sunlit uplands”. Another Tory MP described the policy delivery as “a fuck-up of epic proportions”, casting it as the Stalingrad of not securing a planetarium for your northern marginal.
Having attempted to sell this policy round the country during a somewhat excruciating day yesterday, luxury menswear influencer Rishi Sunak faced a law enforcement probe for removing his seatbelt to film a video for his Insta, as part of the police’s ruthless commitment to rooting out trivial wrongdoing so that people mind less when another one of them is revealed to be a rapist. I haven’t got a huge amount to add to that sentence as an indicator of where we are on various fronts. Still, now that Sunak has picked up his second penalty notice inside a year, the suggestion must be that he is on a pathway of reoffending and should submit to personal rehabilitation lessons with justice secretary Dominic Raab, who is himself facing an investigation on eight formal complaints of bullying. Again, we are where we are.
You have to wonder if Sunak makes the most credible salesman for the specific allocation of cash in this second round of disbursement, given that he took the sensationally odd decision to be filmed during the leadership campaign in July last year telling Tory members in Tunbridge Wells: “I managed to start changing the funding formulas to make sure areas like this are getting the funding they deserved. We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.”
Yesterday found Sunak in only marginally less politically imbecilic mode. I can’t personally get over-exercised about senior politicians making travel time-savings that the rest of us should obviously avoid. But Sunak’s private jet usage has got plenty of backs up, and on a political level feeds unfortunately into the impression that he is what he is: a man who can use private jets. Labour accused the prime minister of behaving “like an A-list celeb” for flying to Blackpool – something A-list celebs are forever doing, of course. I believe Sunak’s RAF flight was kept in a holding pattern while The Rock was given runway priority to hasten his latest trip to play the coin pushers on the Central Pier.
“I travel around so I can do lots of things in one day,” Sunak shot back when pushed on his arrangements. “I’m not travelling around just for my own enjoyment, although this is very enjoyable, of course.” Mm. Spoken like a man whose high-end Santa Monica residence is located in a complex that includes a pet spa. (I haven’t fully checked the levelling-up fund payouts for pet spas, but assume Guildford was successful in its bid for one.)
‘You’re not idiots’: Sunak says people understand why he can’t cut taxes now – video
In general, though, do you care for Sunak’s tone? He seems to have just the two speeds: dewy-eyed prefect delivering a supposedly inspirational speech to much, much younger children; and high-financier unable to fully hide his impatience that he should be required to answer questions from lesser mortals. Neither seems immediately obviously likely to endear him to the British public. Perhaps he’s slightly helped by being up against Keir Starmer, who delivers every statement like his next one is going to be “And had you thought of a preferred wood for the casket?”
Any more pratfalls left in the tank on the PM’s day out and about? At least one, with the PM explaining he wanted to cut taxes but couldn’t, as his audience knew. “You’re not idiots,” he breezed. “You know what’s happened.” “Besides,” he went on, “when I was chancellor I also really preferred it when the prime minister didn’t comment on tax policy.”

Unfortunately for the “idiots”, the chancellor isn’t talking about tax cuts either. Instead, Jeremy Hunt could be found this week leaning fully into the latte-sipping insult his side have long weaponised, by making his own painful social media video in which he explained inflation to the masses via the medium of him ordering a flat white. Is this necessary? I know Jeremy likes to think of himself as one of Britain’s most advanced entrepreneurial brains – he ran a course-listing directory in civilian life – but we must at least consider the possibility that British people currently get a hard lesson in inflation every time they do a shop.
Anyway: on to the idiots. Only in this climate of palpable executive inadequacy could we be reading seemingly bi-weekly stories that comebacks are being planned not just by Boris Johnson, but also Liz Truss – or at least by what we’ll kindly call Liz Truss’s “ideas”, with a parliamentary group established this week with the express aim of the advancement thereof. Truss herself and her former chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng have both set up firms to manage their next steps, while Jacob Rees-Mogg is said to be joining GB News to host his own show. Johnson is being Johnson, and seems well on the way to persuading far too many MPs to give their abusive relationship with him another chance.
Behold, the architects of some of the most short-termist and self-harming policies of recent times (tough field), somehow sailing on regardless to further enrichment while everyone else lives in their mess. As for their various supporters, you have to marvel mirthlessly at the capacity for some serially imploding factions of the Conservative party to believe that their destructive ideas have simply not been done properly yet. The Tory tankies are on the march; do batten your hatches accordingly.
[ad_2]
#levelling #Sunakstyle #hes #among #equally #useless #Marina #Hyde
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

January 20, 2023