THE brief sojourn of the Tory Party’s two leadership hopefuls in Perth on Tuesday for their only hustings north of the border was as nauseating as promised.
Both candidates are competing to play harder to their hard-right base, with the anti-democratic, anti-worker character of the Tory Party on full show.
As we draw closer to the closing of the ballot, it increasingly seems to be a question of whether the decrepit Tory Party faithful have more disdain for women or for ethnic minorities.
On current polling, and much to the joy of Liz Truss, it appears to be the latter.
The Tory leadership contest in itself is an illustration of the sham of ruling class “democracy” in Britain.
The reality is a tiny number of Tory members, disproportionately white, old, rich and concentrated in the south-east of England, will decide the next prime minister.
But this is a farce with very serious consequences for the working people of Britain, as we can see from the slew of soundbites and gaffes from the two characters taking centre stage.
Prior to the hustings in Perth, Truss solemnly promised there would be “no handouts” for the vast majority of working people across Britain already struggling with energy costs before the October and January rises.
Even Marie Antoinette apocryphally offered to “let them eat cake,” but Truss has already made clear, both through her hard-right policies and her “subtle” outfit choice in debate #1, that her idol is Thatcher.
Rishi Sunak might have a bit more media-savvy than Truss but undoubtedly would privately agree with her that British workers need “more graft.”
Sunak has also avoided committing to any meaningful support for working people and ruled out any freeze on spiralling energy costs.
The priority for both candidates is guaranteeing monopoly profits.
Both also remain firmly committed to the inhumane Rwanda refugee scheme, despite it being exposed that the government was well aware of Rwanda’s own poor human rights record when the deal was first struck.
Even further afield, both Tory hopefuls continue to enthusiastically rattle the sabre over China.
But undoubtedly the most prominent issue in Perth on the night was the question of their approach to the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon and the question of a second referendum on Scottish independence.
Both candidates have firmly pledged to veto Indref2.
Regardless of your stance on independence, this is an anti-democratic undermining of the right of the Scottish people to hold a referendum and may foreshadow a broader Tory attack on devolution itself.
Truss may have dialled back from her promise to “ignore” Sturgeon, but both solemnly vowed to take on and defeat the First Minister.
And the reality is that — at a time of increasing industrial militancy and a cost-of-living crisis the administrations at Westminster and Holyrood are unable and unwilling to address — a dust-up between right-wing unionism and right-wing nationalism will suit the Tories, Sturgeon and the SNP down to the ground.
In the face of such a spectacle it would be easy to lament.
Indeed, the reality is that Johnson being pushed out as leader of the Tory Party, just to be replaced with another Tory prime minister, was never a victory in itself.
Together we need to build a mass movement of working people based in our communities, workplaces and campuses, uniting the labour, student and tenants’ movements.
Only a movement of this type can lead and win the fight against austerity, poverty and unemployment and for jobs, housing, healthcare, education and public services.
The People’s Assembly’s protest at the Tory Party conference in October and national demonstration in November offer the chance to bring these movements together on the ground and bring their power to bear on this corrupt government.
