Chris Green MP: Tough challenges for the new Prime Minister

Whether this is to move onto further education in a local sixth form college, to get a job or to head off to university, it is going to be an exciting time of change and growth.

Summer is now almost over and it has been one of the best for many years.

My birthday is in August and it is all too often that clouds are the dominant feature of the weather rather than sunshine.

As a Member of Parliament, I am now looking forward to heading back down to Westminster but I am more apprehensive than usual.

The global economic situation is dire. Countries around the world are teetering on the edge of recession and are about to tumble over.

Much of the economic outlook was set in the beginning of 2020 when governments around the world shut down their economies, closed schools and restricted access to health care.

The vast and inflationary money printing that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak triggered here was replicated around the world.

We knew then that we would have to pay our debts and we are now finding out what that really means.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made a bad situation far worse.

Our global economy, factories, shipping and wider supply chains were still unwinding from lockdowns which has been symbolised by fleets of cargo ships with empty containers being moored off the coastlines of ports around the world from Shanghai to California.

Putin’s actions disrupted our recovery but we should not believe that the current situation is all down to him.

The now former Chancellor Rishi Sunak, in an extraordinary revelation, has now said that he was never provided with data to justify the national coronavirus lockdowns in the United Kingdom and that too much fear was injected, like a poison, into our national psyche.

Rishi Sunak said that the conclusions taken out of Sage minutes often bore no relation to the meetings that they were supported to report upon.

These minutes and deliberations of a wide range of scientists and other experts were then used as the basis of advice to ministers and then to lock down our society.

As many of you know, I resigned from a Government position to protest against the second coronavirus lockdown and a key reason was that the Government could not provide sufficient evidence to justify its actions – the Chancellor, who was one of the four key decision makers and had all the expert advice, has confirmed that I was right to have my doubts.

Whilst Conservative backbenchers were challenging lockdowns, the Labour Party supinely accepted every scientifically unsupported restriction and demanded more. They failed to do their job.

I am looking forward to Liz Truss becoming our next UK Prime Minister but we know that her graduation is going to present the toughest of challenges.