Euan McColm: Is it really too much to expect leadership during the cost of living crisis?

It would appear those battling to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister have taken his evident unfitness for the office he holds not as a warning but as a challenge.

We won’t know whether Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak is to succeed the wretched inhabitant of 10 Downing Street until a week tomorrow but already both have demonstrated their astonishing lack of suitability for the position. If you think that guy was awful, they seem to be saying, wait until you see me in action. I’m going to be worse.

When the energy regulator, Ofgem, announced on Friday that the cap on the price of domestic gas and electricity bills will rise by 80 per cent - to £3,549 - from October, there was no surprise. We have known for some time that bad news was coming. But the fact we had been forewarned doesn’t diminish the magnitude of what is about to happen.

"Here was an opportunity for Sunak and Truss to demonstrate their suitability to become Prime Minister", argues Euan McColm. Picture: Getty Images

The pressures caused by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis will now be horribly exacerbated. Few will not feel the negative impact of soaring fuel bills. Many will, I’m afraid, suffer greatly.

This being so, was it really too much to expect at least some facsimile of leadership from our leaders?

We know that Johnson, the liar who conned the poorest into further impoverishing themselves by supporting his self-serving campaign for the UK to leave the European Union does not care about anyone but himself. Voters have always been nothing more than the means to his end of self-aggrandisement. And so his promise that his successor would announce help for bill-payers in due course was hardly a comfort.

It was, then, up to one of the contenders to say something. Here was an opportunity for Sunak and Truss to demonstrate their suitability to become Prime Minister. Here was their chance to show that they have vision, ideas and - yes - empathy.

Instead, both have been pathetic. Contemptibly so.

Sunak expended much of his energy last week rewriting history on Covid, explaining that the government, of which he was part, had gone too far when it came to lockdowns. That’s right, while the rest of us deal with the gnawing anxiety created by the prospect of power bills that - if we can pay them - will mean significant changes to our quality of life, Sunak’s priority was to pander to the Tory Party’s Libertarian right. He did, in fairness, say - during yet another hustings - that the next Prime Minister would have to do something to help the poorest deal with soaring energy prices. But what was the plan? Where was the detail?

Naturally, Truss - the runaway favourite to win this contest - was not to be outbid in the auction to win the title of best Covid revisionist. Not only did lockdown go too far, she said, but it was nothing to do with her. She’d not been in the meetings.

All of this might have played beautifully with ageing Tories determined to be proved right about a crisis which, they appear to have forgotten, killed tens of thousands of British citizens, but it was of no actual value to anyone.

Unfortunately, Truss had nothing of worth to say on the Ofgem price cap. She did have a plan but we’d have to wait until she was in office to hear about it.

And, so here we are, on the brink of a devastating crisis and all the favourite to be the next Prime Minister has got is “wait and see”. The stomach churns at the prospect of her leadership.

What we needed on Friday was to hear concrete details of what the government would do. Instead, as is so often the case with this appalling government, we got nothing.

Unsurprisingly, the SNP went in hard on the Tories. It was difficult to agree with their broad analysis that the UK Government is not fit for purpose.

But we should not ignore the nationalists’ own appalling behaviour as troubles grow.

Last week, the Scottish Government published its annual GERS figures - data on revenue and growth - which, as they always do, showed that Scotland's deficit is, proportionately, far greater than that of England and Wales. And yet again, the figures - produced by civil servants working for SNP ministers, remember - showed that thanks to the Barnett formula, the mechanism by which government funds are allocated north of the border, public spending in Scotland was almost £2000 more per head in the last year than it was in England.

And what did the SNP do? It rubbished its own statistics. Some were far from subtle. MSP and halfwit Stephanie Callaghan declared the figures “crap”. They were “a work of fiction”.

Others tried a less obvious, but no less reckless, approach. Deputy First Minister, John Swinney, went for some old-fashioned sleight of hand.

The GERS figures, he explained, showed that revenues raised in Scotland were ample to cover all devolved spending. But what this statement missed out was reserved spending for such essential areas as defence, economic development and HMRC.

As we slide into a devastating cash crisis that will hammer household budgets, the SNP cannot - will not - be honest about Scotland’s financial position.

If you still believe that the SNP’s nationalism is of the civic rather than the blood and soil variety then, I’m afraid, you’re not paying attention.

As I walk through the early years of my sixth decade, I’m not sure I recall a period of greater national uncertainty. How bleak the realisation that minsters at both Westminster and Holyrood are entirely unqualified to lead us through the trouble ahead.