IT is quite hard to believe that it was just two weeks ago that I was writing a column detailing a U-turn by the Liz Truss Tory government. As I started writing, her government was preparing to do a massive U-turn on the mini-Budget they had used to bring the UK economy to its knees just a couple of weeks prior. While I was writing, she sacked her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng.

Two weeks later, her cabinet and backbenchers have since sacked her. The last Tory prime minister that was sacked by their cabinet and backbenchers attempted to stage a comeback in the leadership election that followed over the next couple of days, but mercifully, he was unsuccessful.

Nonetheless, we are still having to endure yet another new Tory prime minister being forced upon us.

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So, what of the new Prime Minister? What kind of government is Rishi Sunak going to lead?

We should look first at his own words. After meeting the King at Buckingham Palace and officially being appointed Prime Minister, he made the traditional Downing Street steps lectern speech. He made some claims that are worrying, and some promises he’s already demolished.

Worrying, though unexpected at this point from the Tories, is his proclamation that “economic stability and confidence” will be at the “heart of this government”. That’s a fairly standard bit of patter, but we all know it really means yet more austerity, which will mean yet more misery for those who are already the worst off in society. It won’t be clear to the billionaire Prime Minister, but the people he expects to foot the bill for his predecessor’s failings cannot afford it. They simply cannot.

People who have suffered through 13 years of Tory misery, counting every penny to ensure their basic needs are met, cannot be expected to tighten their belts any further. The part of his speech that I found particularly chilling was the line: “The government I lead will not leave the next generation, your children and grandchildren, with a debt to settle that we were too weak to pay ourselves.”

Who is expected to show strength here? You and I both know it won’t be the people who have consistently grown richer and hoarded more unimaginable wealth since the Tories came to power in 2010.

Back then, David Cameron told us we were “all in this together”; in 2022, Rishi Sunak tells us that refusing to make the poor suffer further is “weak”. It is, of course, entirely possible for the richest to pay more in order to spare the poorest a winter of choosing between heat and food, but apparently, that wouldn’t be a show of strength.

What else did the new Prime Minister say in his speech? He talked about the importance of integrity, professionalism and accountability. Indeed, he said his government would have those qualities at “every level”.

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Then he went inside Number 10, called Suella Braverman and asked her to return to the role of Home Secretary. The very same Suella Braverman that had resigned as Home Secretary just a few days earlier, having broken the rules about data handling.

Welcoming her back with open arms makes clear that the chat about professionalism and accountability was a lot of nonsense. She got her job back as a trade for not backing Boris Johnson during the leadership election. It’s the grimy kind of politics which makes people detest politicians. The recent scandal wasn’t even Braverman’s first – reports have been appearing suggesting that she had been investigated over a leak involving MI5 when she was the attorney general.

Along with the stuff already mentioned, the new Prime Minister has confused many of us by refusing to attend COP27. The UN climate summit took place in Glasgow just last year and every year its importance grows as our chance to reduce the worst impacts of climate change reduces to zero. To turn his back on this critical summit is absolutely dumbfounding. For a Prime Minister who wants to project an air of responsibility, it is one of the most irresponsible things I can imagine.

The words of a Tory are often not worth the paper they are written on, and Rishi Sunak has shown that at lightning speed. The decaying of Britain looks set to simply continue if we allow it.