We are slap bang in the middle of the silly season which, this week, features the Conservative Party conference. Wanting us to believe three impossible things before breakfast, the Tories are adopting distraction tactics.
These rely upon sleight of hand and culminate in repeated attempts to deny some hard truths. Government ministers in successive interviews engage in implausible deniability of who has actually been in power for the past 13 years.
Ministers like to talk about this ‘administration’ (rather than this government). They attempt to draw a dividing line between Rishi Sunak and his government and the the four previous Conservative prime ministers who have been in power for over a decade.
So, ministers argue, it was another ‘administration’ that cut police numbers beyond the bone and led to the huge rise in crime; another ‘administration’ that presided over the precipitous decline in applications to teacher training with such disastrous consequences for schools and for their pupils.
