In My View: Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich & West Norwood

The rapid fall of Liz Truss has resulted in Rishi Sunak becoming the third Prime Minister in as many months and the fifth Conservative Prime Minister in the last 12 years.

In her short time in office, Liz Truss achieved an unprecedented level of recklessness, crashing the economy and forcing up the cost of mortgages by thousands of pounds a year.

Liz Truss made it her priority to cut taxes for millionaires and to increase bankers’ bonuses at the precisely the same time as the majority of UK residents were desperately worried about rising fuel bills and food costs are rocketing for those on low and middle incomes.

She also decided to restart fracking across the UK, even though there was no new evidence to show that it was safe.

But this disastrous performance was simply the latest chapter in more than a decade of low growth and savage cuts to public services.

Rishi Sunak may be the fifth new Conservative Prime Minister, but there is no change in terms of their disastrous approach to governing our country.

Already Rishi Sunak and his chancellor Jeremy Hunt are looking at further cuts to the public services our communities rely on like the NHS, schools, social care and police, while also putting up taxes to pay for the harm their predecessors have done.

And Rishi Sunak is on record boasting that as Chancellor he funnelled public funding away from areas like Southwark and Lambeth towards wealthier parts of the country.

It is unacceptable that the Conservatives want working people to pay the price of their disastrous time in government.

Both Shell and BP have recently announced huge, unexpected profits, further demonstrating that Labour’s proposal for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies is the right thing to do.

The people at the top of the Conservative Party may have changed again, but they have no new ideas and promise only more of the same austerity, cuts to public services and unfair tax increases.

It’s time for a General Election now and a Labour Government to start sorting out the mess they have created and set our country on a path to a fairer, brighter future.