GIVING the closing speech at the Tory party conference in Manchester yesterday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was introduced by his billionairess wife, Akshata Murthy.
Speaking the day after the US Congress voted to cease funding the war in Ukraine, Sunak announced that billions more are to be spent financing the Zelensky regime’s war on Russia, revealing that the UK taxpayer is increasingly alone in doing so.
Sunak said: ‘We have led the world in providing support for Ukraine… We were the first country to send western battle tanks to Kiev… the first country to send long range weapons to Kiev… the first country to train Ukrainian pilots… I say this to our allies, if we give President Zelensky the tools, the Ukrainians will finish the job.’
He announced the scrapping of the Birmingham-Manchester high-speed railway, saying: ‘I say to those who backed the project in the first place, the facts have changed… And so, I am ending this long-running saga. I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project.’
Turning his fire on the BMA and other NHS unions, Sunak claimed: ‘Strikes have led to more than a million cancelled appointments… they continue to demand massive unaffordable pay rises. That they have chosen to walk out this week says it all. This strike is all about politics not patients. These strikes are not in the spirit of the NHS.’
Revealing Tory plans for more NHS money is to be spent financing the health privateers, Sunak said: ‘True believers in the NHS want it to reflect the world we live in today, that means a higher quality service that offers you, the patient, more choice, allowing you to use any provider, independent or NHS, free of charge if that will get you treated quicker.’
Signalling the trashing of professional training in the NHS, he announced: ‘New ways of training, new roles, new ways of working, all driving up productivity… I know vested interests will oppose some of these changes.’
Continuing in the same vein, he said: ‘To ease the level of demand on the NHS, we need more preventive care. We must tackle the single biggest entirely preventable cause of ill-health, disability and death, that is smoking.’
Announcing his intention to ban smoking, Sunak said: ‘I propose that in the future we will raise the smoking age by one year every year. That means that 14-year-olds today will never legally be sold a cigarette… We will also bring forward legislation to restrict the availability of vapes to our children.’
Turning to the Tory war on refugees, Sunak said: ‘Our new law will ensure that if you come here illegally you will be detained and then removed. I’m confident that when flights start going regularly to Rwanda small boats will stop coming… I will do whatever is necessary to stop the boats.’
Declaring war on the unemployed, sick and disabled, Sunak said: ‘We must end the national scandal where our benefit system declares that more than two million people of working age are incapable of actually doing any… It’s not good for our economy. It’s not fair on taxpayers who have to pick up the bill… I refuse to accept this and that is why we are going to change the rules so that those who can work, do work.’
He concluded with the announcement of massive new police state measures, saying: ‘As Suella (Braverman, Home Secretary) has said, there is no such thing as a minor crime. If the police tolerate crime or anti-social behaviour in any form, we’ll have more crime of all sorts. That’s why we now have record numbers of police officers. And every crime should be investigated. Our streets will be safer, our communities more secure.’
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