Monday 15 July 2019

Time to sweep out the dross at the top, says FREDERICK FORSYTH

FOR SOME time I have nurtured a private daydream. In it a new man comes to the pinnacle of power in Downing Street. A man (it could have been a woman - no sexism here) of steely will and armed with a still-bristled yard broom.

By FREDERICK FORSYTH
Jeremy Corbyn
Time to sweep out the doss from the top of government and have a fresh start (Image: GETTY)
And he starts to clear out the dross that has slowly entrenched itself in office and power over the past 20 years. I refer to the Commons, the Lords, Civil Service, pandemic quangocracy and the various national institutions whose aggregate thousands and thousands of rules and regulations, mostly imposed without any electoral mandate, make our lives a constant overtaxed struggle. A guide to the actual level of their talent is a study of the past three years. We know that in that time we have had a Conservative government and nothing else. We know that all that time Labour has been becoming an ever more appalling shambles under its doddering fool of a leader. Given the near-collapse of the Lib Dems, the serial maladministration of the Scots Nats and Welsh Nats and the near-invisibility of the Greens and Sinn Fein, the British world should have been for the Tories to re-fashion.

Instead it seems the largest vote-share may belong to the Brexit Party, founded a few weeks ago.

We are about to say a not-very-fond farewell to probably the worst prime minister in living memory, leaving behind a trail of disaster and we are exhausted by a vastly over-long argy-bargy over her successor.

We know our stock in the councils of the world now wears a jester's coxcomb and only a gracious old lady in Balmoral retains our departed dignity. So from the summer of 2016 what the hell went wrong? The only answer is utter mediocrity in high places. That is what should be swept away.

So prediction time. Ten Cabinet and sub-Cabinet ministers will have to go.

Add 10 dozen more who, in blatant opposition to the clearly expressed wish of the majority of our people have toiled ceaselessly to frustrate that wish and sabotage Brexit these past three years while remaining comfortably on the taxpayers' payroll.
Mark Sedwill
Mark Sedwill is set to be the new ambassador the United States (Image: GETTY)
Those at the top of the Tory party, including the 1922 Committee who made a dog's genitalia of the leadership election three years ago which saddled us with Theresa May, made it incredibly hard to get rid of her and caused the process of finding her successor to drag on and on and on.

That's just the party. What about the bureaucrats? I understand that Ollie Robbins, the Remainer clown who guided Theresa May to concede absolutely everything to Michel Barnier, is already heading for a fat job in the City.

Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill looks like heading for Washington as our new ambassador - another cushy billet.

Even in failure the nobs certainly look after themselves, unlike the over-75 OAPs to be saddled with a swingeing licence fee to the BBC - another fat Leftwing quango that is ripe for a wide-ranging clear-out.
Boris Johnson
I suspect the man with the yard broom is Boris Johnson (Image: GETTY)

I suspect that the man with the yard-broom might be a plump blond fellow who quotes Latin and Greek.

But if being Prime Minister makes him too busy for all the above, I know a couple of combat veterans who would love the job.

A root-and-branch clear-out of the accumulated dross at the top of our national life would have most of us dancing in the streets. And that could be the only way to save the Tories.

The columns swerving to Nigel Farage prove how disenchanted many of us have become. It is all still just reversible, but not by a weakling.


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https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/1152707/british-government-theresa-may-jeremy-corbyn-sweep-out-the-dross-frederick-forsyth
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