Thread by @RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory

1. Let’s start with spindly, posturing mantis Jacob Rees-Mogg, who this week blocked a bill that spares elephants from torture

2. As foodbank use reached 2.6 million, JRM spent £1400 per person for ministers to learn how to create a “powerful personal presence”

3. Last year Lord Geidt, Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor – think of it as like being Shane MacGowan’s dental hygienist – had said his resignation would be a “last resort” and would only be used to send “a critical signal into the public domain”

4. This week he resigned

5. Geidt said prime minister and abandoned candyfloss Boris Johnson had placed him in an “odious” position by asking him to approve (another) breach of the ministerial code

6. Johnson has had 2 ethics advisors, and they have both resigned over Johnson’s irredeemable behaviour

7. John Penrose, govt anti-corruption tsar, said “You can’t just pretend it doesn’t matter”, and also quit

8. But the truth is, it doesn’t matter to Johnson, who is now reported to be scrapping the ethics role, meaning there will – quite literally – be no ethics in Downing St

9. The govt’s new “cost of living” tsar was discovered to have said Johnson should resign over PartyGate and the overwhelming tsunami of other ethics breaches and corruption

10. He also said Johnson “lacks intelligence”

11. Speaking of lacking intelligence, deep-cover minister for gibberish Grant Shapps was reportedly considering temporary visas for EU workers to sort out our airport chaos, which is the worst in Europe because we threw out EU workers

12. Airlines bosses said “idiot ministers” and Brexit are to blame for the crisis

13. Shapps said it was cos airlines overbooked seats

14. So obviously Peter Bone, a child’s drawing of his vampire grandad, said the govt should deliberately overbook deportation flights Rwanda

15. A number of things have subtly changed since the Rwanda plan was first announced by Priti Patel, a smirking, razor-faced ghoul with all the warmth and tenderness of a Klingon backstreet abortionist. I will now describe them...

16. Patel had promised she’d only deport asylum seekers after they’d been vetted by an independent watchdog

17. The watchdog hasn’t been set up

18. She had promised children would not be deported to Rwanda

19. Her policy treats children the same as adults

20. She had promised people would be processed in Rwanda and, if accepted, could return to the UK

21. Deportees can’t return to the UK under any circumstances

22. And in April she promised “tens of thousands” would be resettled. Oh is that right, Priti?

23. By May the promise had dropped from tens of thousands to “about 300”, and at that rate it would take Patel 34 years to meet her original target

24. Then the promised number of deportations dropped to 50

25. Then to 30

26. Then to “fewer than 10”

27. A govt source said “we will operate the flight even if there is just 1 person on it”

28. Patel said the policy was “about securing value for money”

29. She paid Rwanda £120 million, hired a jet at £500,000, and by this week was deporting just 7 people

30. Patel said the policy “would act as a deterrent to people crossing the channel”

31. The day she announced the deterrent, 116 crossed the channel in boats

32.On Tuesday 260 people crossed, an increase of 124%. Excellent deterring, Priti!

33. Ethereally wrong Thatcher cosplayer Liz Truss said people criticising the policy hadn’t suggested any alternatives

34. The UN said this was “categorically untrue”, and they'd offered “many, many suggestions”

35. The UN said UK policy “violates fundamental principles”

36. The Church of England said the policy is “against God’s laws”

37. So ministers talked openly about expelling bishops from the House of Lords

38. And then Prince Charles called the policy “appalling”, so monarchist Tory columnists began talking about scrapping the monarchy

39. It’s all terribly, terribly sane

40. In the end we deported exactly (let me check my maths) zero people for our £120 million, because the European Court of Human Rights – which Churchill helped to set up – stopped the flight

41. You can, I’m sure, picture the scenes of joyless masturbation on the Tory backbenches when they discovered a glorious new enemy in Europe

42. Example: Brendan Clarke-Smith, who said “this is effectively a war”

43. Meanwhile Priti Patel said “we will not be deterred”

44. So to clarify: Patel wanted to disrupt the plans of people acting illegally, which would deter them. But when her own plan acting illegally was disrupted, she said she will not be deterred,

45. Her lavishly scattered wits prevent her from comparing these two concepts.

46. And it seems to be catching: Tory MPs called for us to leave the ECHR

47. Meanwhile Liz Truss, our 8-bit foreign secretary, published a bill to scrap the NI protocol so we could defend the Good Friday Agreement, which is protected by – yep – the very same ECHR

48. So they’re now fighting an impossible battle to save the ECHR at the same time as fighting an impossible battle to destroy it.

49. Minister for bullshit legal excuses Suella Braverman said the bill was necessary because “the NI economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK”

50. The NI economy is the strongest in Britain except for London, cos NI still has access to the single market

51. Johnson called the proposed changes “relatively trivial”, and then called the changes “absolutely vital”, like some sort of Schrodinger’s twat

52. The govt’s top independent legal advisor said it was “very difficult to credibly” claim the bill didn’t break international law

53. The ex-head of govt’s legal dept said the bill is “one of the most extraordinary pieces of legislation I have ever seen” and was“hopeless”

54. A Tory backbencher said “the government is lying to its own MPs and the media” about the legality of its bill

55. In Wakefield, the Tory candidate admitted Brexit was “built on lies”

56. He then likened the Tories to Harold Shipman. A reminder: this is their own candidate

57. Meanwhile the Tory candidate in Tiverton and Honiton refused to say whether she thought Boris Johnson was reliable or honest

58. As rail strikes loom, betwattled walking Tango advert Oliver Dowden launched an online petition to make himself do something about it

59. Back to priapic dust-bunny Boris Johnson, who launched a new food strategy to tackle the cost of food, obesity, childhood hunger, and climate

60. The strategy contains nothing about the cost of food, obesity, childhood hunger, or the climate

61. It does, however, suggest the poor should eat more venison, cos things aren't mad enough

62. The govt’s advisor on food strategy said “it is not a strategy”

63. Meanwhile the benefit for low-income families to get fresh fruit was moved to online-only

64. It went well

65. The scheme's pre-payment food cards don’t work

66. The scheme's helpline wasn’t manned

67. And 52,000 of those targeted for accessing benefit can’t sign up cos they don’t have internet access or the necessary paperwork

68. After Tories scrapped 25,000 NHS beds, health minister and furious gonad Sajid Javid said the NHS “doesn’t need any more money”

69. He did, however, say it should be more like Netflix, which has debts of $14.5 billion and expects to lose 2 million subscribers this year

70. Average wages fell at the fastest rate for more than 2 decades, and we have the worst economy in the G20 except for Russia, which is under global sanctions

71. The govt genuinely claimed the reason for our shocking performance is that we “ended mass testing for Covid”

72. To shift focus, the govt commissioned a private “attack dossier” to prove Labour can’t be trusted with the economy

73. The dossier showed Tories were worse at the economy than Labour, so they didn't publish it – it was leaked by someone with a great sense of humour

74. Tory minister Helen Wheeler ended up having to apologise after calling Blackpool a “godawful” place

75. Blackpool is the planned location of this year’s Tory Conference, and I'm already looking forward to the resulting fun and games

76. And finally, after last week’s announcement that the govt would extend the “right to buy” to include people who haven’t even got enough money to eat, startled halibut Michael Gove admitted they hadn’t even bothered to do an impact assessment on the idea

I've got a book on the way, which you'll absolutely hate.

It's also now on Amazon, and it's very strange to see something I wrote on Amazon. It's beginning to actually feel real, and I'm queasy about it.

Anyway, here it is.

unbound.com/books/the-deca…