Today was going to be the crunch day for the election of a new party leader for the Conservative party but more of that later. It did not look as though there were any imminent showers forecast for the morning so after breakfast, we set off to collect our newspapers. Unfortunately, there was a sign on the newsagent’s window to indicate that he was closed for the moment to deal with a crisis of some sort so Meg and I went to the park and had our elevenses, admiring the beautiful autumn colours as we went. We always have a cloth buried deep within the rucksack to wipe the park bench clear of any rain water, after which we thought we would circulate back to the newsagent to see if he had opened by then. As it happened, it was but he was still unsupplied with newspapers as his distributor has once again let him down. It appears that a crucial employee has gone sick and that leaves all of the regular clients of local newsagents in the lurch. So we popped around to Waitrose where we knew that we could pick up our copy of The Times and took the opportunity to buy some extras. We got back home just after the Politics programme had started on BBC2 because it was interesting to see what Penny Mordaunt was going to do, now that Boris Johnson has withdrawn from the race. We knew that an announcement was to be made by the Chairman of the 1922 Committee at 2.00pm and at one minute before the appointed hour, it seemed that Penny Mordaunt had withdrawn, having failed to make the minimum of 100 nominations. What was interesting about all of this was that one of her most loyal supporters on the Politics programme was adamant that Penny Mordaunt had definitely reached the required minimum of 100 so she was obviously either lying to us or lying to herself. Evidently, her credibility is now in tatters but that is what happens when you are over-enthusiastic in your support.

After lunch, the news media was dominated by the news of the ‘election’ of Rishi Sunak as his was the only valid nomination received by the 2.00pm deadline. Although Boris Johnson and even the Mordaunt camp claimed that they had met the 100 threshhold, one of the Channel 4 reporters revealed that the number of pledges exceeded the number of MPs by about 30. In other words, the figures had been inflated by the various camps and given that politicians of all stripes are constantly manipulating figures to tell favourable stories (and dare I say Tory politicians more than most) it was hardly a surprise that the figures did not add up. But now we have the first Hindu PM elected and also the youngest for two centuries which was quite a surprise. All the formalities will occur tomorrow when Liz Truss formally attends the Palace to tender her resignation to the King, shortly followed by Rishi Sunak who will be asked to form the next administration. All of the talk at the moment is one of ‘unity’ and bringing the Tory party together but I dare say that this will least for about a week before the factionalism and infighting will start again. Rishi Sunak will avoid the self-evident error of not appointing people of talent across the party (both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss only appointed people they thought were ‘one of theirs’ and this was particularly evident in the appointments made by Liz Truss) Nonetheless, there is a deep well of hatred not to say resentment amongst erstwhile Boris Johnson supporters who feel that Rishi Sunak was the person who dealt Johnson the fatal blow by resigning from the Johnson cabinet when he did.

This afternoon, I received a telephone call from my friend in South Oxfordshire and we are going to arrange a ‘dinner date’ in his house, probably in about a month’s time. This we will look forward to but like other things we have to agree mutually convenient dates. In this morning’s emails, I was pleasantly surprised to hear from one of my Hampshire colleagues who is going to attend a family event in Liverpool in late November. We are in the proceess of arranging a date in Novenber when we might meet and my friend hasn’t quite decided whether to make the journey by car or by train. If he decides to travel by train, then I can arrange to meet him at Birmingham International which is quite an easy journey for me to make by car (M42 permitting). There is also the possibility that he might have the time available to make an overnight stop with us as well. In the second week of November, we are due to have an ‘Old Fogies‘ lunch in Winchester so I am pleased that the social diary is filling up quite nicely for November. November is one of those months without the charms of October on the one hand yet Christmas is still some way off in December so it just a month to be lived through. Nonetheless, it looks as though Meg and I will have quite a few social engagements to which we can look forward.

As soon as I was awakened by my alarm this morning, I realised that it was raining quite heavily. Early on Sunday mornings, I walk down in order to collect our Sunday newspaper but was soon brought to realise that it was not only raining with intensity but I was shortly to get as wet as the proverbial drowned rat. In fact, it was raining so hard that you could hear the water gurgling down the drains which, in places, failed to cope. You have thought that walking down a pavement would have been unproblematic but the excess of surface water in various places meant that you had to keep a careful eye on the traffic lest a passing vehicle send a ‘whoosh’ of water all over you. Nonetheless, I consoled myself with some of the tracks on my trusty old iPhone which gave me a selection of old favourites. One of these was the Halleluja chorus from Handel’s Messiah which always puts me in mind of the Huddersfield Choral Society and how Meg and I used to whiz through the environs of Hudderfield on our scooter when we made the journey on our trusty old Lambretta scooter from Manchester to Leeds in the 1960’s. At the same time, I heard ‘Zadoc the Priest‘ first composed as a coronation anthem played for George II and I believe played at every coronation since then. The ‘anthem’ starts with a lot of ‘tum ti tums’ which you can imagine as background music whilst everyone was waiting in their seats in the Abbey until the choir bursts forth. When I did eventually reach the newsagent, it was a frustrating time both for him and for myself as his supply of newspapers had not been delivered. He was feeling somewhat upset (and with good reason) as when he phoned his suppliers to ask/complain, all that happened was that the phone was put down on him. When I got home, I had to strip off most of my clothes which were wringing wet and I put them straight into the washing machine before a drying out. After this thorough soaking, it was especially nice to change into some nice dry clothes. Then Meg and I had breakfasted and watched the Sunday (politics) programme, after which I popped down to Waitrose to pick up the Sunday Times and I also took the opportunity to replenish some other supplies.

Attempting to comment on the ‘race to No. 10’ rather puts me in the positon of a sports reporter who is having to predict the result of, say, a Rugby match which is only two thirds played. Concentrating on what we do know, though, it is the case that Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson had a long meeting last night, starting at about 8.00pm and going on for a couple of hours but what was decided between the two, if anything, has not been revealed by either side. Perhaps each was playing a game of ‘chicken’ with the other to see who blinks first. Johnson may have felt that his strongest card was that if he were to reach 100 nominations, he would probably win when the vote goes to the constituency associations. On the other hand, Rishi Sunak is piling up nominations for himself and probably feels that he has to say nothing, and to concede less. As today has progressed, Rishi Sunak has gained the support of influential figures on the right of the party such as Steve Baker, ex-chair of the ERG (European Research Group who are composed of Eurosceptics in the vanguard of Brexit) and Suella Braverman, the ex-Home Secretary (also from the right of the party) As I write, the declared figures seem to be 142 declared for Sunak (well over the 100 bar), Johnson on 59 (well under the bar). Also the Johnson camp are claiming that they have 100 nominations in the bag, it seems odd that they are not publishing these names or figures so perhaps there is a certain of ‘spin’ going on. There is also an account of a telephone call from the Johnson camp to Penny Mordaunt (who is a long way behind) asking her to swing her supporters the Johnson way in return, no doubt, for a lucrative top cabinet post. The Mordaunt camp have refused this outright, adding that most of the supporters will not be ‘delivered’ to Johnson but would probably break for Rishi Sunak anyway. There is also the issue of the Committee of Privileges investigation of Boris Johnson which is really hanging over him because were Johnson to be elected as Prime Minister then within weeks he might have to be suspended from the House of Commons, his constituency seat subject to recall and he will probably lose the bye-election. Another factor to be taken into account and which will be revealed in the Andrew Neil Politics programme tonight is the threat, in the face of a Johnson victory, to side with the opposition and either cross the floor of the House of Commons or simply to refuse to support a Johnson government in the face of an Opposition confidence motion in th House of Commons which would certainly generate a General Election. More will be revealed hour by hour but that is the latest state of play.

As the weather forecasters had predicted, today dawned as a beautiful bright autumn day which is just as well in view of what we had in mind for today. After we had breakfasted, we went to collect our newspaper and then made our way to the park where we anticipated that we might meet up wih some of our park friends. This we did and we met up with Seasoned World Traveller first of all and then our University of Birmingham friend secondly. As we settled down for a coffee, the former reached into his rucsack and pulled out the bar of chocolate which I had now won in a bet. I predicted a few weeks ago that Liz Truss would be gone in three weeks time and won my bet. I divided the chocolate into two and was about to offer half of it back to my friend but he wouldn’t take it as he is abstaining from chocolate as part of his healthy life style so the rest of us shared the chocolate between us. Naturally, we had a lot of discussion how the next day or so was going to pan out politically as the three probable candidates for the Tory party leadership are busy securing nominations to attempt to reach the high threshold of 100 nominations each by 2.00pm on Monday. We decided to cook a fairly early lunch as I particularly had in mind that I wanted to get the lawns cut today if I possibly could. Fortunately, we got the lunch prepared and eaten and the washing up done so that I could start the lawn cutting promptly at 2.30. I was pleased to get this done by 4.00pm which gave me a little bit of time to descend into Mog’s Den and to liberate one or two of the larger apples to eat during the week. Having got the lawns cut this late, there will be one last cut this year which I generally time around November 5th or bonfire night. On the the last cut of the season, I take pains to drain the petrol tank completely and also to empty the oil from the oil sump. Normally speaking it is getting dark when I do this as I have to run the engine of the lawn mower until the petrol tank is exhausted but I will try and short circuit the process a little this year by getting myself a petrol siphon.

The whole day today has been dominated by the rumours of how the various contenders for the Tory party leadership are doing to secure their nominations. It looks as though Rishi Sunak has easily reached the minimum required for the nomination of 100 supporters. But the really critical question is whether Boris Johnson can reach the required minimum number – there are some commentators who felt that he might not. But now in the late afternoon, some of Boris’ supporters are claiming that they have the required number ‘in the bag’ but this does not match up with the numbers reported on the various spreadsheets in the Main Street Media. Of course, there might be a certain amount of ‘spinning’ in all of this but less us assume, for the purposes of argument, that Johnson does exceed the required minimum. We could end up a scenario in which Rishi secures the nominations or votes of one half of the party but Boris Johnson only about a third. When these two choices are put out to the wider electorate in the constituency parties, the received wisdom is that Boris Johnson will almost certainly win and therefore be back in Downing Street by Friday. This prospect is filling various parts of the political elite with both fury and dismay. The editor of the Conservative party website, ConservativeHome, is of the view that the Tories may be engaged in a ‘spiral dance of death’ as a Johnson election could lead to the total annihilation of the Conservative party. Having been rejected by a majority of the party quite recently and ejected from Downing Street, the prospect of a PM voted for by only about a third of the Parliamentary party means that we are in a Jeremy Corbin/Lix Truss type of scenario again. The Conservative party may well be ungovernable and it could be that a chunk of MPs might vote with the Opposition to precipitate a General Election (which three quarters of the population want, by the way) Any legislation might be impossible to pass as rebellions will be widespread and a period of massive instability is the prospect before us which can only be alleviated by the calling of a General Election. The Tories are trying to avoid this like the plague as it will mean the practical wiping out of the Tory Party which it will take some two or three parliaments to reverse, if ever. The ultimate irony about all of this is that the greater the mess that the Truss administration is judged to have left behind and more the Labour Party pulls ahead in the opinion polls, the more there is a call from some (uninformed) sections of the electorate to ‘bring back Boris, to sort it all out’

Today was, as predicted, a really gloomy and rainy day so after we had got ourselves showered and breakfasted, we surveyed the weather and thought that we treat ourselves to a coffee in Waitrose café. This turned out to be an inspired choice of location because just as I was getting my car parking token, our University of Birmingham friend turned up in his car, evidently with the same thought in mind. So we spent a very pleasant hour having a coffee together and, at the same time, we bumped into one of our pre-pandemic aquaintances as well. Whilst in the café, I received a phone call from one of my oldest (in every sense of the word) friends (who is 95 years old). We worked together in the Central Office of Information in central London (now abolished by a previous Tory government) during 1964-65 so our friendship extends back some 58 years! Before the pandemic, we used to meet, together with family members, in central London but evidently got out of the habit in the past few years. However, we now want to see if can get together some time in November so we need to try and arrange a day and a date, probably on a Saturday, when we can meet again with our friend, her son and daughter-in-law and of course my own son and daughter-in-law. To make life a little easier on the organisational front, my friend has now moved from Devon to be within a mile or so of her son in Surrey. As a link with history, my friend who has had the most interesting of careers one worked with (well, in the same room as) Alan Turing, the legendary mathematician and WWWII codebreaker. I must encourage her, when I see her, to make a tape of some of her reminiscencies as her history goes back such a very long way.

When we eventually made it for home, we decided to have a rather experimental fish lunch which turned out fine in the end. I had bought some Basa fish fillets which I cooked in the oven in tinfoil and then finished off adding to a heated lasagne type white sauce in order to give it some flavour. Together with a baked potato and some cavolo nero kale, this provided a very nutritious Friday midday meal. However, I had not heard of Basa fillets but when I did a bit of research, I discovered that it was fish farmed in South East Asia and perhaps liable to industrial contaminants. Therefore, it might be a bit too cheap so I think that in future I may avoid this and revert back to the sea bass we generally eat on Fridays. This afternoon as it was so gloomy, I decided it was probably a good idea to bring our trusty soupmaker into use. Fortunately, I had a supply of frozen root vegetables stored in the freezer so it was quite a simple job to get these parboiled and then added to some fried onions, coconut milk, lasagne type sauce and some curry sauce to finish off in the soupmaker.

This afternoon has been dominated by feverish speculation as to who will run for the now vacant Tory party leadership (and Prime Minister) The bar has been set deliberately high by the 1922 committee as each candidate must have 100 nominations to enter the first round of voting. This limits the number of candidates to 3 as there are 357 Tory members at the moment. The front runners are Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and, of course, Boris Johnson. As I write, only Penny Mordaunt has formerly declared her intention to stand. It may be that Rishi Sunak has more support at the moment but it is difficult to tell as there is a lot of ‘spin’ and false optimism in evidence. The arguments in favour of Boris Johnson are that he is the only one of the three with a clear mandate having won a huge majority for the Tories in the 2019 election and, of course, he has an almost mythological characterisation as a vote winner. But even his supporters admit to his flaws (partygate, lying to parliament, acting unconstitutionally in attempting to prorogue parliament to mention but three) but are prepared to overlook these. If Boris makes it to the final two, he will probably win with the wider Tory party electorate. But on the other hand, there is a ‘leak’ from the Privileges Committee which is investigating a claim that Johnson deliberately misled Parliament which points towards a conviction. Were this to happen, then he would be suspended from Parliament and his seat would be liable to a potential ‘recall’ vote by his electorate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Here he has a majority is 7,200 which, on present voting intentions, he would almost certainly lose. So will the Tories elect a leader who they have previously rejected and may well within a week or so of winning the race to PM have to resign? The support for Boris is so rabid amongst some that many Tories would be prepared to take the risk whilst significant others are absolutely appalled by any chance he may regain office and are wondering about strategies about how he may be upseated.

Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister in the 1960’s, coined the memorable phrase that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ This in undoubtedly true but probably needs updating to ‘a day is a long time in politics’ After the debacle of the resignation of the Home Secretary yesterday which was followed by disgraceful scenes in the House of Commons where it was reported that Conservative MP’s were manhandled and bullied ino a vote in favour of fracking, today we had the resignation of the Prime Minister, Liz Truss. It looked as though last night’s shenanigans was absolutely the last straw for many Conservative MPs and no doubt several more letters found their way into the postbox of Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 backbenchers committee who had a meeting with Liz Truss half way through the morning. Then came an announcement in the late morning that there would be an announcement at 1.30. The lectern was duly wheeled out and just after 1.30 Liz Truss emerged from within No. 10 to announce that she had not need able to fulfil the mandate upon which she had been elected and hence she had tendered her resignation to the King. This made Liz Truss the shortest serving Prime Minister in UK history. She has clocked up 44 full days in the role – a long way behind the next shortest premiership, that of Tory statesman George Canning, who spent 118 full days as PM in 1827 before dying in office from ill health. Even the 44 days appears flattering as a whole chunk of normal ‘political’ days were removed as political activity was suspended during the duration of the Queen’s funeral. The idea of a ‘mandate’ is interesting in this context because Liz Truss argued that she could not fulfil the mandate given to her in her election as Conservative party leader. On the other hand, several politicians, not least the recently resigned Suella Braverman, the ex Home Secretary, have referred to the mandate given to them by the election victory of 2019. So which should have priority in cases where they conflict?

Liz Truss did indicate in her resignation statement that the intention was to elect a new leader by a week on Friday i.e. withn 8 days. The very short-lived hope is that a ‘unity’ candidate may emerge that can be elected leader by acclamation. But the modern Conservative party is both so fractured and fractious demonstrated by the fact that eight candidates have so far thrown their hats into the ring and it is rumoured that Boris Johnson is flying back from holiday in the Caribbean and will probably seek relection as well. Quite surprisingly, Jeremy Hunt has already indicated that he will not run. To elect a new leader in just over a week, then Sir Graham Brady may well set the nominations ‘bar’ quite high as well as the percentage needed to progress to the next round of voting. All of the opposition parties are clamouring for there to be a General Election but in order to get this, the Tories would have to bring down their own government by not supporting them in a vote of confidence which is rather like turkeys voting for Christmas. The commentators are making the observation repeatedly that the modern Conservative party may well be ungovernable. As well as being divided by age and by geography, the Tory party is riven by factions of which the most influential is the ERG (European Research Group = extreme Brexit loving right wingers), the ‘One Nation’ group (old fashioned, quite liberal and left of centre Tories), the Red Wall (recently elected into ex-Labour seats in the North and the Midlands), the Blue Wall seats (traditional Tories from the South of England), the libertarian right, some Remainers, those loyal to Boris Johnson, those who loathe Rishi Sunak seeing him as the architect of Boris Johnson’s downfall and I could go on. From the outside, the party looks almost ungovernable.

Trying to predict the outcome of the election requires a brave pundit. The bookies are already putting Rishi Sunak as favourite but I suspect that this does not take into account the depth of hostitility to Rishi Sunak. On the other hand, Penny Mordaunt only came eight votes behind Liz Truss in the leadership elections and seems to have performed reasonably well as as Leader of the House of Commons, even deputising for Liz Truss the other day. I suspect that the final two will be Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt and, if I had to stick my neck out, I would back Penny Mordaunt to eventually win through. This is because I suspect that Penny Mordaunt has fewer enemies and may be better placed to bring various factions of the party on board. One of Liz Truss multiple crass errors was to appoint a Cabinet absolutely in her own image giving no seats to supporters of rival candidates, irrespective of their merits (a mistake even Margaret Thatcher did not make). In addition, she only had the support of less than a third of the parliamentary party, making her the ‘mirror image’ of Jeremy Corbin on the Labour left. In order to expedite the election, it appears that candidates to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader will need at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs, 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady has said.

This morning, we hoped that the engineer would call round to check over our BioDisk and I was mightily relieved to see that just after 9.00am he was there and working on the control panel. He seemed a nice young mn and I always offer a cup of coffee to anyone calling round to do a job either indoors or out. As it turned out, it looked as though it was a transient electical fault that had caused the alarm lights first to flash and then to turn themselves off, so it did not look as though there any serious malfunction or signs of damage. Naturally, we were relieved by all of this so then Meg and I made a trip into town to pick up our newspaper. We had a slightly artificial timetable this morning which precluded a trip to the park. Instead, we went to park near Asda so that I could make a hunt within the supermarket for cardboard boxes. I was successful in locating one of the types of fruit storage boxes in which I was interested so I secured this one and one or two more. Then it was a case of getting home and settling ourselves in front of TV to watch Prime Minister’s Questions and, in particular, to rate the performance of Liz Truss after after her recent reversals of policy. Keir Starmer made quite an effective attack with one or two jokes at the PM’s expense whilst Liz Truss herself tried one or two of the old attack lines such as Labour’s support for striking workers which is not at the forefront of voters’ minds at this very moment. However, one surprising concession wrung out of the Prime Minister was a firm commitment that next April all pensions would be uprated in line with inflation (announced this morning as 10.1%). The new Chancellor was floating the kite that if pensions were only to be uprated by the average rise in wages rather than inflation then this would save several billions. The average pensioner might have lost up to £400 if pensions had not been fully uprated so no doubt this would be highly appreciated by pensioners most of whom probably vote Tory in any case. Today is the day when our domestic help calls around so just before she left, we descended together into Mog’s Den and picked a selection of apples. Some of these were a magnificent size so we selected some apples that we believe to be eating apples and some that are almost definitely cookers and our domestic help is going to work her culinary magic on her supply. For myself, I was delighted that one of the largest eating apples was a lovely and crisp, slightly acidic flavour and I ate this in slivers with a little cheese. For lunch, I used up the leg meat from last weekend’s spatchcock chicken which I made into a type of fricassée and it made for a delicious meal.

After lunch, we decided to give ourselves a break from the surfeit of news so I idly surfed through the TV channels and on ‘Film 4’ stumbled across the 1956 film of the career of Douglas Bader named ‘Reach for the Skies‘ Bader was a wartime hero who had lost both legs in a flying accident before the war and proved to be an inspirational Wing Commander during the war itself. Ar first, I thought that the dialogue in the film was a bit of a pastiche (RAF types saying ‘Jolly good show, old chap’ and that sort of thing.) The film was made in 1956 and I probably saw it first in 1958 i.e. some 64 years ago and when I think about it, the dialogue in the film was probably quite accurate and people actually did talk like that. The film has some quite dramatic highlights (Bader was shot down but the Germans allowed another artificial leg to be flown out for him, one having been lost when he was shot down).

The breaking political news this afternoon hs been the resignation of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. She had apparently communicated an official document (or a draft of a document) to a ‘trusted parliamentary colleague’ using her own personal email. This is a breach of the Ministerial Code and so Braverman realised that she had no option but to resign. In her resignation letter, she admits to a ‘technical’ breach of the Ministerial Code but this wording seems designed to minimise the nature of the offence and the nature of the security breach. Also, I ask myself how an official document came to be in her own private email account before she could transmit it – this, itself, must also a breach of the Code but nobody has mentiond it yet. But the resignation letter contains stinging criticisms of the PM saying that it appeared that several manifesto commitments were not being honoured. Braverman also says in effect ‘I have made a mistake so I resign’ with an implication that perhaps Liz Truss ought to be doing the same. The word that is being used is ‘destabilising’ and having replaced both the Chancellor of the Exchequeur and the Home Secretary within days, that seems like a massive understatement. Finally, there was a vote in the House of Commons tonight on fracking which was supposed to be ‘whipped’ but a Government minister on instructions from No. 10 contradicted this and the Chief Whip promptly resigned. This is a government disintegrating before our eyes.

Today dawned bright and fair but the minute after I got and breakfasted, I needed to phone the firm that services our BioDisk (sewage treatmnt apparatus) to complain that the visit planned for yesterday had failed to materialise and, moreover, they had failed to return my call during the day. I was then informed that the engineer was on his way only to get a telephone call a few minutes later to inform me that their engineer had phoned in sick and then they would try and get somebody with me tomorrow. Later in the morning, I received a telephone call from the engineer himself who told me that he had been injured the day before at work but now promised me that he would be with me at about 9am in the morning. We shall wait and see but I am not holding my breath. Nonetheless, Meg and I collected our newspaper and then made our normal Tuesday morning trip to Waitrose café where we expected to meet up with some of our long standing acquaintances. We were not disappointed and met up with Seasoned World Traveller on the one hand and one of our pre-pandemic Waitrose friends on the other. Seasoned World Traveller left me with an interesting, but cynical, observation that ‘every man has his price’ What I did not appreciate until I did a bit of Googling is that there is a massive argument in moral and social philosophy which particularly well discussed by Kant. The origins of the expression can be traced back to Greek thought but it seems that the modern expression of this sentiment can be traced back to Sir Robert Walpole in 1734 was castigating corrupt members of Parliament, whom he called pretended patriots, and said ‘All those men have their price’. After we had made our way home, we tuned in to ‘The Politics Programme‘ on BBC2 starting at midday which I watched for a few minutes before I walked down into town for my usual Tuesday Pilates class. Then it was home and our usual meal of haddock fish cakes which are easily and quickly prepared for when I get home at just about 3.00.

This afternoon, I had a fairly pleasant surprise. I walked down the steps into the lower bit of garden which I call ‘Mog’s Den’ because I suspected that some of the apple trees I had planted down there might have come to fruition. The apple trees were hardly expensive at about £2.00 each but were planted some years ago now. But one of them was absolutely laden with apples and although I think from the greenness of the fruit they might all be cooking apples rather than eaters, we can always make them into a nice compôte which we can eat either with ice cream and/or some yogurt or custard if the weather turns out colder. I always try to keep the apples on the trees as long as possible but mid-October seems a good time to pick my crop as I am anxious that after a really stormy night it is possible for most of the crop might fall and I lose the major part of it. I quite like to go down to Asda at this time of year and ‘liberate’ one of those large shallow cardbox boxed in which the Asda fruit is often supplied. I find that this type of cardboard box disappears like snowballs in June so I need to make that a priority tomorrow.

Some interesting poll news has just been published by Sky News. A YouGov poll of Tory members found 55% would now vote for Rishi Sunak, who lost out to Lizz Truss, if they were able to vote again, while just 25% would vote for Lizz Truss. The poll found 55% of members think she should resign now, while 38% believe she should remain. So this is a fairly massive case of ‘buyers remorse’ but I am amazed by some of the ‘vox pop’ I have heard with Conservative party members when the news media have descended upon them. More than one has said that they liked and approved of Liz Truss and her policy stances which only goes to show, I suppose, that members like this are as economically naive as their chosen candidate was. I wonder, though, whether there is a growing realisation in both the Conservative and the Labour parties that putting a choice before the constituency parties means that an extreme left candidate like Corbyn or an extreme right candidate like Truss will always be voted in (as the constituency parties tend to be populated by the extreme left in the case of Labour and the libertarian right/Bexit supporting in the case of the Tories). Tomorrow will be fascinating as it is Prime Ministers Questions at midday and if Liz Truss performs poorly, then pressure to replace her will surely only increase, perhaps beyond the tipping point for the majority of Tory MPs.

Today was one of those best described as frustrating because we knew that a visit from an engineer to examine our BioDisk was due today and we were anxious not to be away from the house when the engineer was due to call. But the frustration increased throughout the day when, despite staying in on what was quite a beautiful morning, the planned visit from the engineer did not materialise. I made a lightning visit down into town by car to collect our newspaper and some much needed supplies fom Waitrose but after that we knew that today was going to be a day of political announcements and debate so we were not unhappy to park ourselves in front of the TV to see what transpired. As we were waking up this morning, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequeur was busy hitting the airways to bring to the nation (and to the markets) some advance announcements about the rapid deconstruction of the disastrous ‘mini budget’ for which Liz Truss was responsible. I was slightly reassured to learn that the Chancellor had sought the permission of Mr. Speaker to make some announcements in advance of his statement to the House of Commons scheduled for 2.30 this afternoon. The results of the early morning announcements followed by a more formal 5 minute statement delivered at about 11am were one of the most startling ‘U’ turns in the whole of our economic history. The most incredible announcement today was the planned 1p cut in income tax was not just delayed but parked ‘for ever’ so the abandonment of the 45% tax rate cut, the rescinding of the corporation tax cut and abandoning some of the more egregious income tax avoiding measures for the self employed meant a a truly comprehensive dismantling of the previous mini-budget. Even more surprising was the fact that the ‘bed rock’ of Liz Truss’s policies which was the energy support package designed to last for two years was now going to cease in April. Incidentally, this now aligns with the Labour party policy. What happens after April depends upon a Treasury review but it is probable that universal help will cease and that a more targeted approach will be used after April.

The House of Commons this afternoon provided a most entertaining spectacle. Keir Starmer had put down an ‘Urgent Question’ for the Prime Minister to come to the House of Commons to answer and this was to give an account of the reasons that lay behind the sacking of her previous Chancellor. But Liz Truss found that there other unspecified reasons that detained her in No 10 and prevented her appearance in the House of Commons. So the Urgent Question was answered by Penny Mordaunt who is the new Leader of the House of Commons. Given a terrible brief she battled on gamely to attempt to answer the questions from all parts of the House following the Urgent Question and indicate that there were ‘very important reasons’ why Liz Truss could not attend the House of Commons but was not at liberty to discuss what these were. To all intents and purposes, it looked as though Liz Truss was too afraid to come to the House of Commons and was actually hiding away. As soon as the Urgent Questions session had ended, it was time for the scheduled statement of Jeremy Hunt to make as the new Chancellor of the Exchequeur. At this point, Liz Truss did appear and sat through her new Chancellor’s statement with a sort of fixed grin and she then disappeared again, immediately the statement was over.

In terms of raw politics, it has become increasingly evident that the present Conservative party is beset by many competing factions and although there is a recognition that the days of Liz Truss are numbered, it is by no means clear how she might be dislodged and even more unclear who might succeed her. Having said all that, Jeremy Hunt seems to have played quite a canny political game and his actions seems to have restored a degree of credibility and brought some stability to the febrile markets. But whilst a lot of the unfunded tax cuts have now ‘gone’ there is still quite a chunk – £30 billion? – that still remains and has got to be funded somehow. Public sector ‘cuts’ are not the evident answer as all of the ‘low hanging fruit’ was already addressed in Austerity Mark I when Osborne was Chancellor so how much remains to be cut now? It is increasingly being said that Liz Truss is ‘in office but not in power’ and some Labour MPs were asking in the Commons what was the point of having the present Prime Minister when all of her flagship economic policies had been both discredited and then dismantled. Jeremy Hunt’s stock has risen as that of Liz Truss has fallen but how many Conservative MP’s would see him as a future leader is open to question, given his poor showing in the early rounds of the elections for Tory Leader. `But one has to concede that his touch so far has been deft and one suspects that his political potential may be open to reassessment.

For the last few days, we have had a good start to the day with clear-ish, blue skies and an absence of wind. I got up early and went off to collect the Sunday newspapers after which we had our normal cereal-based breakfast whilst we watched the Laura Kuennsberg show. This generated no real surprises as the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, reiterated his by now well rehearsed script that the previous government had done well in helping consumers with their energy bills but had made two enormous mistakes in their dash for growth. Those with long political memories may recall that other Conservative Chancellors have also attempted a ‘dash for growth’ and these attempts have nearly always ended in failure. It may well be that the Brexit-loving and libertarian right who have taken over the modern Conservative party have not read enough of our own recent economic and political history and hence it is not surprising that classic mistakes are being repeated. William Keegan, the economics commentator, has indicated that ‘the ghosts of British economic crises past are raising their spectral heads. Memories are being evoked of the ill-conceived and ill-fated dashes for growth under Conservative chancellor Reginald Maudling in 1962-64, Anthony Barber in 1972-74 and my old friend Nigel Lawson in 1988-89.’ These sentiments were also enunciated by a prominent Tory, Robert Halfon, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and an education minister under Theresa May, who said he believes Liz Truss needs to apologise to the public for the economic turmoil caused by the mini-budget three weeks ago. He told Sophy Ridge on Sky News ‘I worry that over the past few weeks the government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as laboratory mice on which to carry out an ultra-free market experiment’.

After breakfast, Meg and I made for the park where we met up again with our two park friends, Seasoned World Traveller and our University of Birmingham friend and we shared a coffee together as we could sit around a table on the terrace outside the park’s cafe. We wondered collectively whether Jeremy Hunt’s announcements would serve to calm the city jitters when the stock exchange opens tomorrow morning. Two of us thought that Hunt’s announced measures and promises to ditch even more of the Truss budget might do the trick but one of us thought that this was unlikely. We will find out tomorrow morning who is correct but certainly the next few days are going to be critical. At the end of the day, though, if we are going to fund some part of our budget by borrowing, then we have to convince those who lend us the money i.e. international investors, that we are a good proposition. Another factor to be borne in mind is the operators on international stock markets have no loyalty to anybody except themselves so if it is worth their while to speculate against the pound, no doubt they will do it. As long as the markets are moving either up or down then somebody can make some money out of it. After we had discussed economics and politics, we turned our attention (goodness knows why) to the modern rifle and when the notion was first developed that the accuracy of both bullets and guns could be radically improved by adding a degree of spin to the bullet which is what, I believe, the modern rifle does. It looks as though it was during the American War of Independence that it was realised that a more accurate weapon could kill British commanders and this was a more efficient use of firepower. Not being particularly interested in militaria, I will leave this debate for those who are interested in such matters.

Meg and I lunched on one of those ‘spatchcocked’ chickens that are split open and laid out on a tray that you just have to put into the oven, which we did whilst we were out. Then we lunched on that before setting down to watch the World Cup rugby match between Italy and Scotland. Italy proved to be the better team and nearly completed the whole of the match without having a try scored against them. In the event, though, this match did not hold our attention as much as the match of yesterday when England overwhelmed Samoa so I may need to be a bit more selective about which of these contests I watch in the days ahead.

A UK spy chief is reported as saying that in the conflict in the Ukraine, Russia is losing ‘staggering’ numbers of both men and materials. This may or not be the case but I well remember the sage words of the Labour minister, Denis Healey that ‘in war, the first casualty is truth’ Of course, this was particuarly true of the Iraq conflict and probably the number of losses on the Ukrainian side are likely to be under-reported. Nonetheless, there are now quite a constant drip of stories indicating how ill-prepared and under-motivated the soldiers are on the Russian side, so it might be that before the winter starts to bite in Northern and Central Europe that the Ukrainians are starting to turn the tide.

It was a most beautiful autumn day today so Meg and I had no hesitation making for the park as soon as we had collected our newspaper. On our way down, we spotted Seasoned World Traveller also making for the park so we decided to alter our routine a little. We parked our car on the lower car park nearest to the park cafe and when we went in search of our friends, we found the two of them enjoying the beautiful autumn weather outside the park café. Needless to say, we were full of excitement about the political news of the last twenty four hours. For once, we shared the same view that Liz Truss had quite probably ‘blown it’ as conservative Prime Minister and her remaining period of office may well be measured in days. So the bar of chocolate which is our wager for the period of time that Liz Truss can remain in office is increasingly starting to look like a 50:50 bet. After we had had a fairly full discussion, Meg and I then made for for home so that we could start to prepare a lunch of mince and onions.

Saturday afternoons are always a little attenuated because it is part of our routine that we go to church in the late afternoon. But today is the start of the Rugby (League) World Cup being played in England so we thought we would tune in and watch one of the first matches in the competition. Incidentally, the competition is going to be interesting for viewers as the competiton will be a triple hander as there are male, female and wheelchair competitions being held in the same tournament. The game this afternoon is between Samoa (one of the pre-match favourites) and England and I am impressed by how fast and free flowing the game is compared with the Rugby Union counterpart. In the latter, a lot of time is spent scrummaging with scrums often collapsing and having to be reset, not to mention the lineouts when the ball goes out of touch. So not having watched Rugby League very much, I have quite grown into the game that I saw this afternoon.

We are in the most interesting political situation as of this morning. The new Chancellor of the Exchequeur, Jeremy Hunt, was interviewd on Radio 4 and gave a calm and reassuring performance. He indicated that two major errors had been made by the previous Chancellor, namely offering tax handouts to the already extremely wealthy on the one hand and not making the mini-budget available to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) for scrutiny on the other. Of course, it is now widely appreciated that Jeremy Hunt is in an extremely powerful position as he can go ahead and dismantle some of the more noxious parts of the mini-budget within the next week or so. Liz Truss is not in a position to sack her newly appointed Chancellor in his first two weeks so he can, in effect, do whatever he thinks is sensible and which will reassure the markets. He has made a start by indicating that the public sector will have its budgets restrained (have we heard that before?) and that some of the planned income tax cuts may not go ahead and there may well be tax increases as well. What this means, politically, is the entire strategy upon which Liz Truss campaigned and was elected is now being comprehensively dismantled. For this reason, serious political commentators are now suggesting that Liz Truss is not only a ‘busted flush’ but also the mandate that political parties have with the electorate is well and truly broken and therefore there is a very strong case politically, if not constitutionally, for there to be a General Election. The only way for this to happen is for Liz Truss to resign and be replaced by a successor ‘by acclamation’ or for a vote of confidence to be lost in the House of Commons which is possible but not as likely. There are two particular time events in the next day or so. One of these is to see what the reactions (and opinion polls) reveal when the Sunday newspapers are published tomorrow. This might be enough to persuade several of the famed ‘men in suits’ to advance upon Liz Truss and tell her that the game is up. Probably, more crucial even than this, is the reaction of the markets when they reopen on Monday morning. I suspect that Jeremy Hunt has said enough and given enough signals to calm the markets which will give Liz Truss a few days of respite but it will not save her.

As a footnote to today’s Rugby League World Cup news, as I blog England are leading Samoa by 60 points to 6 and it looks, as though in the second half, the Samoans have just about given up the ghost. Needless to say, the commentators are going ecstatic about the England performance but one can well and truly understand why this is so given the scoreline.