LOCAL politicians are split along party lines over the recent upheavals at the heart of government – with Labour calling for a general election and Tory councillors welcoming the rise of Rishi Sunak.

Carlisle City Council's Leader John Mallinson gave a brutally honest verdict on Liz Truss’s 45 days as Prime Minister.

“Clearly, Liz Truss’s premiership just didn’t work from the very beginning,” said the Conservative politician. “It’s good it was brought to a swift end.

“I’m very supportive of our new Prime Minister. He comes from my wing of the party. When Boris went, I was wondering whether we should have a completely new person who hadn’t been part of the Johnson government.

“But I was always confident with Rishi.

“He demonstrated his credentials through covid and kept us going as chancellor. I think he’ll be an excellent Prime Minister. I listened to Prime Minister’s Questions today and he acquitted himself very well.”

Mr Mallinson also praised Rishi Sunak’s choice of cabinet members, pointing out that – unlike Liz Truss – the new PM had ensured that his ministers represent a broad range of views across the party.

He said: “If you have people there with slightly different perspectives and they can have good healthy debates they’ll come up with sensible polices. Your cabinet needs to be a broad church.
“I just hope he can bring everything together. I like the fact that he kept Jeremy Hunt at Number 11 [Downing Street]. He came in and quickly steadied the markets. I know there are difficult decisions to be made.

“Interest rates have already markedly dropped; and we’re trading with the dollar at a far better level than we were. It’s all good.

“But we can kid ourselves that everything in the garden is rosy. There are hard decisions to be made. It will be a hard winter and there’s the concern about energy prices in the spring.

“I can’t pretend that our government in recent times has been blameless. But there are a number of issues which are global, and they need global solutions. There has to be a rebalancing of finances.
“The preference is that the economy grows, and I guess that’s a bit of a tall order in the short term. But we must grow the economy. We must find a way of balancing the books while still protecting the vulnerable in our society.”

Labour’s Lisa Brown, who represents Denton Holme and Morton South, said: “People have talked about Labour’s factional battles, but the Conservatives are as bad, if not worse.

“We’ve seen a hard-line group of right-wing MPs take control and really go for a free-market individualism approach to our economy. It’s done damage and it was irresponsible.

“But the instant reaction of the markets has told us that it was always going to have a chaotic effect. I don’t see Rishi Sunak as blameless in all of this. He was kind of the bomb that went off in their faces.

“I’m not saying Boris Johnson should have stayed, but Rishi Sunak was the one who left and caused that avalanche of MPs leaving and now it’s worked in his favour. He's now said he’s going to put it all back together.”

She described the Liz Truss premiership as embarrassing – both in the UK and further afield on the global stage.

Lisa added: “We’ve become a joke on American talk shows. None of it’s good for normal, everyday people, who just want to get by in this cost of living crisis. It entrenches that them and us thing further.

“It’s hurting real people.”

Asked is she considered Rishi Sunak economically competent, she said: “He’s exceptionally competent. He managed to divert all those funding formulas away from deprived areas into Royal Tunbridge Wells.

“He knows what he’s doing. If being economically competent means he’s good at making money, they yes, he is.

“Looking back, it’s easy to look back with rose-tinted spectacles when there was a lot of money being thrown around and say he did a good job [during the pandemic]. But can he do that with this level of crisis?

“I’m not sure.”

Lisa added: “We need a general election so that we can put the country back on an even keel and let the real work start.

“Liz Truss was clearly the worst Prime Minister of all time. Rishi was the one who tried to set it all off by getting rid of Boris. It’s been like the X Factor. After a certain number of years, it ran out of talent, and they had to stop it. The Conservative Party is in the same situation.

“They’ve run out of real talent.”