Editorials

Last Week in Politics

9 October 2017

By Lauren E. White

It is impossible to overstate the importance of last week in politics. It was to be a week for the Conservative Party to reassert their authority after losing their majority in the election. But things, as we should have expected in this current climate, didn’t go to plan.

So, to make sense of it all, here’s last week in politics.

1. Sunday – Theresa won’t say if Boris is ‘unsackable’

When asked on her 61st birthday on The Andrew Marr Show if Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is “unsackable”, Mrs May dodged the question.

It set the media talking as it is widely speculated that because of the election loss for the Tories, May can’t sack Johnson from the cabinet. If she did, he could easily take her down in a leadership contest and kick her out of Downing Street.

2. Tuesday – Bear Grylls speaks at the Conservative Party conference

Yep. Bear Grylls. He broke the Scout code to be politically neutral and made a “non-political” appearance at a political party’s annual conference.

Grylls, known for drinking his own urine as a survival technique, asked for £50 million for the Scouting Association as there are tens of thousands of children on waiting lists.

His dad was a Tory MP, though.

3. Tuesday – Amber Rudd announces acid policies

You might have missed what Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced at the Conservative Party conference this year, but some of it was pretty important.

Rudd announced that all acid sales to anyone under 18 years of age would be banned and that the sale of sulphuric acid to anyone would be banned. This is the government’s response to the frightening increase in acid attacks this year.

4. Tuesday – Boris Johnson is disrespectful to Libyans 

This wasn’t widely reported by the media, but it happened nevertheless.

Boris Johnson said that Sirte in Libya could be like Dubai, a great tourist destination, “once they’ve cleared the dead bodies”. It caused outrage (and rightly so) among many commentators, members of the public and MPs, including Heidi Allen who said that Johnson should be sacked for his remarks.

Number 10 said that his words were not appropriate. And we can report that Boris has not been sacked – yet.

5. Wednesday – Theresa May’s terrible day

Prime Minister Theresa May had a really terrible day when it was her turn to make her speech at conference. The letters on display on the wall behind her fell off, she had a cough throughout and had to take a cough sweet from the Chancellor and a ‘comedian’ handed her a P45 – a letter notifying her she had been sacked.

You will definitely have missed what May actually said in the speech. She promised investment in housing, but it didn’t go down very well with anyone as it works out as 5,000 new houses a year because it doesn’t even touch the crisis.

May also promised to cap energy prices, a policy she nicked from former Labour leader Ed Milliband.

6. Friday – Calls for May to resign as PM

The most credible threat to Theresa May’s position as Prime Minister since the day after the election in June came on Friday as MP Grant Shapps told the PM to resign.

He claimed he had around 30 MPs who agree with him, enough to trigger a leadership contest within the Conservative Party that would potentially change our Prime Minister again. Shapps also said he had “one or two” cabinet members who agreed with him.

Turns out that Shapps’ demands weren’t as serious as we first thought and Theresa May hasn’t resigned – yet.

Who knows where we’ll be this time next week.

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