Were you running a comedy show, Liz Truss?

Kolkata: As Liz Truss quits her job in 45 days, the sequence of follies would surely have intrigued Sir Humphrey Appleby, James Hacker’s adviser in the much-loved Yes Minister series. Life seemed to be imitating fiction as she and her paraphernalia behaved like stand-up performers, and I don’t quite mean Parliamentarians.

I do wish that Winston Churchill, the jolly old colonist, was alive to witness these tidings and recollect his sherry-soaked prediction for India post independence. He had lamented, and I do forget the exact words, that a bunch of scoundrels and ruffians could not be entrusted to run an entire nation, constructed by the white man’s burden. Well, truthfully, the current bunch in London were not fully penal profiles, but inadequate they certainly were, in terms of statecraft.

Let’s consider the case of Suella Braverman, who bravely questioned the flow of Indian visitors, complaining nattily that they just don’t return. Arguably a defensible point of view, just that it was against the stance of her leadership, a minor deviation you may suggest. Even more trivial was perhaps her choice of using a personal email address for official communication, breaking sacrosanct Government codes. It turned out to be the equivalent of a driver not possessing a valid licence, and thus worthy of a hasty suspension.

Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor replacing Kwazi Karteng, swiftly reversed all the tax cuts that Liz Truss had suggested in her mini budget. This includes the much-damaging Corporation Tax freeze, reversal of payroll reforms and in quintessential Yes Minister style, VAT-free shopping for international tourists and duty free alcohol rates. Contradicting her confident leader, he also suggested imminent cuts in public spending, a possibility sternly denied by the Lady just a week back. For much of colored history, U-turns as above have been ascribed to ill-informed third world politics, and certainly not true-blue Oxbridge values.

Then, of course, is the just-departed leader of the pack, Mary Elizabeth Truss, who quite ironically falls just short of ‘trust’, as a phonetic ally of her title. Once again, like a Yes Minister photocopy, she insisted that she was going nowhere and will lead the party to the next elections, the first part could well be a defensible confession, now yet another statement reversal. And yes, she did say sorry, a very first-world strategy of candid confession designed to swamp the finest ills, adapted diligently in the Nuremberg Trials as well. The UK is not short of competent historians and they will be better qualified to assess whether she was the most underwhelming captain of the ship, post the Victorian era surely.

What makes the soup truly mulligatawny is Rishi Sunak, the Gunga Din of this passage of GMT, a character with a remarkable post-facto fan following. It seems all that he said was right, for country and party, and minor discrepancies like the Non-Dom stature of the wife and the melanin content in skin should have been overlooked. If he does make a comeback and becomes PM, it will be more Wild West and less Saurav Ganguly, dramatic and flamboyant.

Trying to make sense of this curious turn of events is indeed the new monarch King Charles III, just graduating to matters of state from features of the environment. He is helpless as per constitution, a fine alibi actually for what is a hopeless situation seemingly, unless a Dunkirk style rescue act is commissioned. Even then, a suitable leader to drive the foray to Normandy seems missing and the King’s Speech, circa 2022, seems troublingly bare.

Just as shocking as the breakdown of the empire, post war, is the capitulation of parliamentary democracy in the nation of its birth. The eccentricities of Boris Johnson, including the Bertie Wooster like attitude towards breaking house rules ( the notorious booze party) seemed to be an aberration in personality, an error in appointment and a spiritual recurrence of St. Vitus Dance. But the psychedelic antics of Liz Truss seemed to suggest a dangerous pattern that folks of stature are no longer interested in politics and today’s leaders are like the minor counties, not quite First Class.

If the ruling party of any other functional democracy had resorted to this abdication of integrity, India included, there would have been a massive price to pay, in stability and perception. With a reducing economy, rising inflation and the beastly energy crisis, the UK is already going through the horrors, like a Michael Holding spell on a first day Headingley pitch, and can ill afford this chaos.

Sir Humphrey Appleby had once lovingly suggested to the Prime Minister, ‘If you're going to do this damn silly thing, don't do it in this damn silly way.’ As Indians we do feel bad to see Liz Truss and the precious institution of British democracy crumble like humid Oreo biscuits, the latter did inspire our school of governance. But we would love to humbly assure the Islanders that in spite of Sir Winston’s soothsaying, New Delhi is doing just fine, a few stray scoundrels notwithstanding.