While the recession threatens, Boris Johnson is absent. Supposedly to handle current affairs, the conservative head of government honeymooned in Slovenia last week. At the same time, the central bank warned that inflation would top 13% in the autumn, plunging the UK into its longest recession since the 2008 financial crisis. Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi was also away from London.
“By convention, it is not for this prime minister to make major budget changes during this (interim) period. It will be for the future prime minister” to do that, a spokesman told Downing Street.
Boris Johnson resigned in early July after months of scandal. Conservative Party members vote in August to name his successor, who will be announced on September 5. Since the announcement of his resignation, he has already been criticized for having missed crisis meetings dedicated to the historic heat wave that hit the United Kingdom or for not having received the English soccer players after their victory in the European Championship.
“Someone has to be in charge”
On the other hand, he celebrated his marriage to Carrie Johnson and went on vacation to Slovenia last week, where he claimed on local television to have had a “wonderful” stay. “We had a wonderful honeymoon. We climbed every available mountain, we scuba dived in lakes, we rode bikes,” he said.
“An economic crisis like this requires strong leadership and urgent action, but instead we have a Conservative party that has lost control,” criticized Labor MP Rachel Reeves.
“Someone has to be in charge,” former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown told ITV. “There is a void that needs to be filled.”
A meeting with the two candidates.
“If we wait for the new prime minister, it will be too late,” he warned, asking Boris Johnson and the two candidates to succeed him – Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak – to agree on emergency budget measures.
“The prime minister needs to bring the two candidates together in the next two weeks to agree on a solution and help people and businesses pay their energy bills,” said Tony Danker, director of Britain’s powerful employers’ union CBI.
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon called in a letter on Monday for a meeting between the heads of government of the four British nations to “agree on urgent measures to help those who need it most”.
Source: BFM TV
