The real world is intervening against Truss - the healthcare plan isn't enough and fracking won't happen, says Marr
22 September 2022, 18:14 | Updated: 22 September 2022, 20:09
Andrew Marr believes the real world is intervening against Liz Truss over her healthcare shake up and fracking plans.
“There's a grand Illusion hanging over Westminster. You can't see it, or touch it or smell it," he said at the top of Thursday's Tonight with Andrew Marr on LBC.
“But it's there - and the nearer you get to the heart of government the stronger it is. It's simply that Westminster is boss. It’s in control.
“His Majesty’s ministers make the economic and political weather. Truth is, the outside world is stronger and harder by far, and politics has to bend to it. Example. This week we’re waiting for a great big optimistic shift in economics with the mini budget tomorrow.
“I'm sure it will be big potatoes. But today Bank of England raised interest rates to the highest level for 14 years and one that Britain might be already in a recession.
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Thérèse Coffey's plan 'can't measure up to the scale of the problem'.
“Example - today we got the new Health Secretary’s Therese Coffey plan for the NHS. A government determined to slash taxes cannot of course find much new money for a health service already on its knees.
“There were some perfectly sensible ideas - allowing chemists to prescribe more drugs, changing the pension rules to stop so many GPs retiring early, asking for volunteers and making it easier for foreign doctors to work in Britain.
“But, given the constraints on the new Health Secretary there was no way today’s announcements could measure up to the scale of the problem – it's taking three times as long as it should for ambulances to get to heart attack and stroke victims, there’s not nearly enough staff, and almost one-in-eight of the population is on the waiting list for non urgent treatment.
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“Oh yes… and then the real world intervenes again- today we learned that hospital admissions for Covid are, rising once more. I could go on.
“One more example. A passionate speech by Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Commons today in favour of fracking.
“But this week Iain Conn, the former boss of Centrica, explained on this programme why the geology and politics of the UK made it a non-starter. I'm going to go out on a limb. The fracking policy was badly-thought-out leadership election stuff and it ain't going to happen.
“Of course politics matters and of course it can do good. but only when it works with, and takes into account, the great forces, the unbending facts of the world around it.”
