A musician said he felt like the rest of the country was finally realising that the “Conservatives don’t care about people”, on Thursday night.
Stuart Murdoch, the lead singer of the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian, was speaking on the BBC Question Time panel in the city of Musselburgh.
Shortly after an audience member queried if Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon was right to say she “detests” the Tories, Murdoch laid into the government – and claimed that people in Scotland have been wary of the Conservatives for some time.
He said: “It feels like we’re in a bad dream, and we’ve finally woken up – the rest of the country finally woke up.
″I don’t know what it’s taken the rest of them, but it feels like we’ve known this all along.”
Asked by presenter Fiona Bruce what he exactly he meant by that, he replied: “That Conservatives don’t care about people. I feel like we’re living on a different planet.”
He continued: “They’re tone deaf to the needs of ordinary people.
“I can’t believe when they came back recently they started talking about the discredited ‘trickle-down’ [economics].
“What an insult that we should be expected to eat the crumbs off a rich person’s table...we deserve to be at that table.”
A round of applause broke out at that.
To recap, prime minister Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng were only in office for a couple of weeks before they unveiled their deeply controversial “mini” budget. It included £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts and prompted a sudden drop in the pound as investors lost faith in their strategy.
Now, both are facing revolt from their own MPs and have already U-turned on one of the budget’s key policies – with more potentially on the way.
Murdoch was not the only one to rip into the Tories during the show either.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said that the current state of the economy in the UK spells the end of the current government.
“The reality is Liz Truss is finished. Kwasi Kwarteng is finished. And I hope the people have woken up across this country and it means the Conservative Party is finished as well.
“Because they have exposed, in a matter of weeks, what many people in this country have known for a long time. This is a political party out of ideas, out of touch, lying, cheating, economically illiterate and morally bankrupt.”
He claimed that the lack of action on the cost of living crisis is “unforgivable”, and that he hoped people voted for “meaningful change” next time the country goes to the ballot box for a general election.