Suzerainty by Default

THIS can be, and is, a debilitating process. All around there is a transparent attempt to shift the onus for the current crisis on to somebody else, or on to near-supernatural elements the responsibility for which invariably attaches to others and not to present company. The Prime Minister, harassed, mauled, dazed by the quality of the debacle overtaking the economy, is showing signs that, somehow, history has slid back to the nervous months of 1966. She has lost her touch, she has almost lost her bearings. Confidence, one would have thought, is an irreversible process: once you come to acquire it, there is no way of reverting to an inchoate state of the mind. The Prime Minister is disproving that notion.