Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.
On behalf of the establishment (the left-wing media wing), I would like to apologize to Liz Truss for the behavior of the establishment (the very powerful economic wing) during her short tenure as British Prime Minister.
Yes, in the week we learned that the classic TV sitcom “Faulty Towers” was returning to our screens, there was an equally ill-advised offering in the form of trusses.
Now, if you or I got a new job and immediately announced the biggest tax cut since 1972, financed by a massive expansion of borrowing, and made little effort to explain how it would be paid for, Then just 45 years later was unceremoniously and embarrassingly ousted. Days – that’s less time than Rihanna’s “Umbrella” hit number one in the UK singles chart – because the economy crashed through the floor, we’ll probably be hiding under a rock forever.
Truss is back, however, and he’s back in style with a 4,000-word essay in the Sunday Telegraph. In that context, in the journalism industry a 4,000-word article submitted would be greeted with howls of laughter and given strict instructions to go back and cut out 3,500 of those words. But trusses are nothing if not conventional.
In his essay, he takes a dig at the “strong economic institutions” that he says led to the abrupt end of his premiership; A run, you’d think, so short that he ended up with a lettuce (lettuce, incidentally, got a job as a senior economist at the World Bank).
“I am not claiming innocence in what happened [Ed: no shit, Sherlock]But fundamentally I have not been given a realistic opportunity to implement my policies by an extremely powerful economic institution with a lack of political support,” he wrote.
Truss, you will remember, is a member of the Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010. The Tories might as well have the word “Establishment” tattooed on their foreheads (or perhaps their aides tattooed on their foreheads is a little too vulgar and working class).
A few days later, he told his mini-budget audience: “Was it the right decision? It’s very hard to say.” Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Truss, you will remember, is a member of the Conservative Party, which has been in power since 2010. The Tories might as well have the word “Establishment” tattooed on their foreheads (or perhaps their aides tattooed on their foreheads is a little too vulgar and working class).
Caption Competition
“Thanks for doing this, Mr. President, it should sell for a fortune on eBay.”
Can you do better? email [email protected] Or on Twitter @pdallisonesque
Last time we gave you this picture:
Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best of our postbags – no prizes other than the gift of a smile, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze.
“This week’s Venn diagram: Center-left and center-right doing their best to overlap,” Fred Myers.
Paul Dallison PoliticoIts slot news editor.