IN this week’s column, Warrington North Labour MP Charlotte Nichols calls for a general election and a change of Government.

The politics of the past month have been completely bizarre.

Not because Boris Johnson eventually lost the support of his party, but because the whole Government has gone AWOL.

With the Westminster media breathlessly focused on the vicious squabbles of Tory leadership candidates disowning their party’s record in office, cabinet ministers have been demob happy and stopped turning up to answer questions or be quizzed by select committees about their day jobs.

It is almost as if they think that everything is going so smoothly and successfully that they can coast until the new PM.

And yet we face huge problems that need action now!

The cost of living crisis is plunging families into desperation and will get worse when the energy cap rises again in October, but the Business Secretary didn’t even lift the phone to ask if the nuclear production from Hinkley B could be extended, and now it has closed for good.

The record heatwave caused chaos and yet the Prime Minister skipped the emergency COBRA meeting to host still another party and his successors boast about wanting to scrap action on climate change.

Constituents continue to contact me in record numbers about failures at the Home Office delaying their passports and threatening their summer holidays, while the complacent Conservatives deny there’s a problem and call to cut civil servant numbers by a fifth which would grind our public services to a halt.

I hope Warrington Guardian readers were able to see ITV Tonight’s feature from the North West Ambulance Service and Warrington Hospital last week. They showed long queues of patients on trolleys who couldn’t be admitted to A&E for lack of beds, and ambulance staff unable to respond to emergency calls until their patients were admitted.

This is a crisis and we all deserve better – patients, doctors, nurses, ambulance crews and auxiliary staff – and a government that recognises these challenges and will work to resolve them.

I don’t know what is the opposite of a beauty pageant, but that is what we have seen from the Tory hopefuls this past month as their fantasy promises show that they have no understanding of the pressures that our country faces, and certainly no plan to fix them. Uncosted tax cuts will not fix the NHS or tackle the climate crisis, and they will not be targeted to the struggling households that need help the most.

The Government has run out of steam and ideas and promoting one of cabinet ministers responsible won’t help. We need a general election and a change of Government.