Despite the rise in food and energy prices as a result of economic inflation leading to an enduring summer of misery in the United Kingdom, its leaders are nowhere to be seen, reports CNN.
The sense of collapse is only mounting; health leaders on Friday issued the grim warning of a “humanitarian crisis” without action to stop energy prices from increasing over the winter.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the National Health Service Confederation, said in a statement that many “could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions … These outbreaks will strike just as the NHS is likely to experience the most difficult winter on record.”
The highly unusual intervention comes after weeks of warnings that the UK is at only the start of the worst cost-of-living crisis for generations.
Inflation passed 10% earlier this week, placing a greater strain on households who are already struggling to make ends meet. The country is on track to enter a recession, with GDP expected to continue shrinking through the end of the year and beyond.
On top of the economic pain, transport and dock workers are striking, and there are warnings of further industrial action across the public and private sectors. Even some lawyers in criminal cases have gone on strike, causing disruption in the already clogged courts.
The biggest rail strikes in 30 years started on Monday night with trains cancelled across the UK for much of the week.
Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, however, is on his second holiday of the summer. When pressed on why Johnson is not back in London coming up with an urgent action plan, Downing Street says that major spending plans should be taken by the next Prime Minister.
Johnson’s replacement either Liz Truss, the current foreign secretary, or Rishi Sunak, the former finance minister whose resignation sparked his eventual downfall — will not be in place until September 5.
That is almost two months to the day since Johnson announced he would step aside, ignoring calls for him to leave office immediately and allow a new leader to get on with the business of governing.
The next Prime Minister will not be elected by the British public, but by the members of the ruling Conservative party, thought to comprise fewer than 200,000 people in a nation of around 67 million.
This is entirely constitutionally correct. In the UK, voters elect a local member of Parliament. The party with the most seats — and, with any luck, the majority needed to pass legislation in Parliament — requests the permission of the monarch to form a government.
Conventionally, the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister.
Written by Adekunle Biodun