Thread by @RussInCheshire

Because I was busy last week, this episode of #TheWeekInTory covers more than 7 days, but not – you’ll be amazed to hear – the 700 years it would take most govts to get through this lot.

Remember, it’s OK to want to scream or take drugs during this epic.

Brace, brace…🧵

1. The Tories lost 2 by-elections in a single night, and by record-breaking amounts

2. A dignified response came from defeated Tory candidate Helen Hurford, who locked herself in a dance studio (the traditional fridge presumably being unavailable)

3. Inspired by Hurford expressing herself via the hidden medium of secret dance, our heroic PM Boris Johnson ran away from his own party conference

4. One of his own MPs said his absence was “no great loss to us”

5. Another said “he’s shown absolute contempt for colleagues”

6. Sinister count (not a typo) Michael Howard said the PM should resign

7. Robert Buckland said Johnson should “look in the mirror and do better”

8. Johnson seems to have been face-down over lots of mirrors, so he skipped a queue of 500,000 patients to get his septum fixed

9. Meanwhile Tory Chairman and adenoidal, chronically be-Tangoed culture warrior Oliver Dowden managed to cancel himself by quitting

10. Mouth of Sauron Priti Patel had her usual grasp of reality, and said “we’ve done incredibly well” in elections they’d just massively lost

11. Hot on Patel’s cloven-heels was Boris Johnson, who said he would “listen to voters”

12. Voters said they wanted him to quit

13. Johnson immediately abandoned listening to voters, said their opinion “doesn’t matter”, and the public should “expect more of the same”

14. He then announced he wanted to remain in power until at least 2030, and tragically he didn't mean half-past-eight

15. To prove he was up to the epic and wildly improbably task of being in the job another decade, he organised a photo-op of himself going “jogging”

16. He was dropped 25 feet away in a chauffeur-driven car, and then got out and pretended to finish a run

17. Only 3 weeks after 1/3 of his MPs voted against him in no-confidence vote, “several dozen” of his MPs submitted letters demanding another no-confidence vote right away

18. His ethics advisor resigned after being asked by Johnson to break the law

19. And the govt refused to release records of Johnson’s “negotiations” with his old chums as he was handing out massive and iffy Covid contracts to them

20. But a Tory peer took £3000 per month (undeclared) from a company in return for “opening doors” to those cushy contracts

21. Emails show him saying he “would not promote the company” in getting contracts from human spork Matt Hancock unless he was (unlawfully) paid for it

22. To prove they’re in nobody’s pockets, Tories auctioned off dinner with Johnson, tottering avian monstrosity Theresa May, and glistening polyp David Cameron for £120k

23. Johnson’s anti-corruption tsar – who also quit – said “you can’t just pretend this stuff doesn’t matter”

24. But small business minister, flocculent walnut and master of the Freudian slip Paul Scully said it doesn’t matter because “politicians are held accountable at the bollocks box”

25. And speaking of bollocks, Johnson buggered off to Ukraine again

26. Analysis shows every single official call or visit to Zelensky has come within 4 hours of Johnson facing another self-caused crisis

27. Anyway, with Johnson gone, Etch-a-Sketch thundercunt Dominic Raab was left in charge, and Britain immediately ground to a complete halt

28. Grant Shapps falsely pretended it was all cos airlines had sold every seat to two passengers

29. Criticising two people occupying one space is a bit rich from Shapps, who has more identities than Jason Bourne (who people also travel halfway round the world just to punch)

30. Airline bosses said the problems were unrelated to seats, but “completely to do with Brexit” which had been an “abject failure”

31. Over 8000 job applications to help fix the airport problems had to be rejected because Brexit means we can’t employ them

32. Meanwhile rail strikes began, and Shapps said it was “crazy” to suggest he wanted them to go ahead

33. Train service operators said Grant Shapps had stepped in to rule that he would “not allow” them to negotiate with unions to avoid strikes

34. Shapps, minister responsible for transport (but not understanding his own job), refused to join in talks cos “it is not my responsibility”

35. During the pandemic he took back from rail companies the responsibility to negotiate terms – so it literally is his responsibility

36. Addled Tory MP and bewitched thumb Mark Jenkinson said the strikes were “a vision of Labour’s Britain”, seemingly struggling to remember who the govt is right now

37. Two-thirds of the public support the strikes

38. Polls also showed the public think the govt is failing HUGELY on inflation, immigration, the economy, NHS, housing, tax, transport, benefits, crime, Brexit, the environment, education and employment

39. So, just the minor stuff, then?

40. As a free bonus, they’ve also chosen to fail on decency: after an earthquake hit Afghanistan, Liz Truss, ITV4 made flesh, said “the UK stands ready to support them”

41. 1600 Brits had offered homes to Afghan refugees, but in 9 months only 2 refugees have been placed

42. A report blamed govt “disorganisation and chaos”, costing £1.2 million a day

43. So the govt cut by 25% the number of staff working to fix it

44. The PM said, “This is a very, very generous, welcoming country”, and to prove it, they’re going to electronically tag migrants

45. The tagging plan breaks the govt's own guidance, which was published – by the Tories – in January

46. The Times said Priti Patel was furious at UK judges who stopped her shipping desperate refugees who had broken no laws off to Rwanda, and she called the judges “racist”

47. Given who said it, this demented claim is only extraordinary because it replaced a far more important story

48. The Times had originally used the space to cover Johnson’s attempts to give Carrie – then his mistress – two £100k senior jobs when he was foreign secretary

49. Johnson had then called The Times and pressured them to pull the story – and they did, despite the story being true

50. Dying palm-tree Michael Fabricant claimed Johnson had merely asked officials if a “highly qualified person, his wife Carrie” could be his chief of staff

51. But she wasn’t his wife at the time – his actual wife was fighting cancer and caring for approx 57% of his acknowledged kids

52. And I’m not sure a degree in Theatre Studies and Art History makes Carrie “highly qualified” for govt either

53.But that wasn’t the whole story

54. It turns out Carrie’s withdrawal as a candidate for the jobs was the result of Boris’s latest mistress-related gagging order about his positively barnyard breeding habits

55. In this case the gagging order seems to have been: kneel down and gag

56. While Johnson was “independently” promoting Carrie's suitability for a job, a fellow MP had walked in on her giving him a blowjob at work

57. The MP in question seems to have been Gavin Williamson, a lurching stack of inadequacy wearing teeth stolen from an exhumed donkey

58. Rumours now claim Williamson had been given his massively undeserved knighthood in exchange for agreeing to stop informing his fellow MPs about the noshfest he'd witnessed between Johnson and Carrie, who Gavin had nicknamed “Princess Nut Nut”

59. Everyday office life in Johnson’s govt now includes oral sex, drunkenness, parties, bullying, missing vital meetings, watching tractor porn, conducting affairs, and taking drugs

60. And on it goes: Chris Pincher had to resign after getting pissed and groping two men

61. Pincher had already resigned as whip in 2017 after making unwanted passes at a man who described him as “a pound-shop Harvey Weinstein”

62. Despite him losing the same job TWICE for essentially the same offence, Peter Bottomley said “I hope Pincher is soon back in govt”

63. So to summarise: Johnson got in trouble with his Johnson. Pincher got in trouble for pinching. Fabricant fabricated. Bottomley reached rock bottom. And James Cleverly … well, he remains the exception to the rule

64. Meanwhile David Warburton will face an inquiry over cocaine use, which will be hard to defend since, in his wisdom, he posed for photos next to fat lines of charlie

65. He’s also being investigated for alleged sexual harassment and secretly accepting £150k for “advocacy”

66. I have my doubts his colleagues see much wrong in being paid to pull strings – Brandon Lewis said it was “right” and “absolutely fine” for Prince Charles to accept suitcases containing €1 million in cash from controversial Qatari politicians

67. Literal mad-woman-in-the-attic Nadine Dorries was back, performing a sexually suggestive duet with Boris, based around the number “69”

68. Then she claimed there had been 11 world wars

69. Then described her “long-standing memory” of a sporting event that never happened

70. Reports say at least 6 Tory MPs plan to defect to other parties

71. The remaining Tories announced a new trade deal to “help British farming” that will leave UK farmers £300m worse off

72. The govt said “workers cannot expect pay rises” because it would cause inflation

73. Then the govt said we must become a “high wage economy”, seemingly without anybody getting higher wages

74. However, pensions will rise by 10%, because obviously inflation isn’t caused by the only demographic with a majority of Tory voters

75. Oh, and MPs got a £2000 pay rise in March

76. And then ministers said they wanted “to ease restrictions on City bosses' pay” so they could prove the “benefits of Brexit”

77. A study found Brexit would keep wages down by at least £470 per person per year for at least decade

78. And we’ve just experienced the worst quarter of UK trade on record

79. And Brexit has cut trade/GDP by another 8%

80. Add those numbers to our 40-year record 9% inflation, and we’re talking about a 17% drop in typical standards of living

81. All of this came as a surprised to Tory minister and sheared Afghan hound Chris Philp, who claimed NHS pay has “kept up with inflation”, when it’s actually left NHS workers £6000 per person behind inflation since 2010

82. Somehow, despite all this, when they were asked for some of the other benefits of Brexit (beyond making multimillionaires into multi-multimillionaires and a 17% pay cut for everyone else) the govt struggled

83. Jacob Rees-Mogg – a cross between the memory of rickets, and Lucius Malfoy after a flash-fire – said his top Brexit benefit was centred around a plan to change what he called “funny numbers” on signs inside the Dartford Tunnel

84. Other than fixing Dartford’s subterranean integers, JRM, minister for Brexit Opportunities, boasted Brexit meant sparkling wine could now use plastic bottles

85. Clearly feeling he’d proved his point, he said the govt won’t bother to assess whether Brexit has been a success

86. Then he deleted data about MP’s attendance, just months after he'd stalked around leaving notes on civil servants’ desks demanding constant attendance

87. Health update, and Tory NHS privatisation since 2012 had led to a “significantly increased” number of avoidable deaths

88. Meanwhile, in an entirely unexpected turn of events, the govt's charming policy of releasing raw sewage into our drinking water hasn’t gone well, as random inspections revealed the polio virus had returned

90. Laurence Fox, a pestilential eruption of idle xenophobia, privilege and stupidity, stuffed into the waxy corpse of an exhumed Regency orphanage worrier, changed his Twitter profile pic to a swastika made of Gay Pride flags

91. The Tory chair of London’s police and crime commission met this with a gentle tweet of “Oh Laurence” and a “chuckling” emoji

92. Energy minister Greg Hands admitted he forgot to ask the Hinkley Point B power station to remain open a year longer to ease the energy crisis

93. And after Tories increased rough sleeping 280% in 10 years, Michael Gove secretly introduced a bill to criminalise rough sleeping

94. More legislation news, as the govt began smashing up international law and human rights in a floundering orgy of ineptitude and vandalism

95. First, international law: in their latest attempt to Get Brexit Done, the govt passed a bill to undo the all the Brexit they assured us they’d "got done" in 2019

96. Boris Johnson’s oven-ready deal has now skipped the middle-man, and gone straight into the toilet

97. How's it going? Well, it is now 2,175 days, 3 prime ministers, 128 ministerial resignations, and 8% of our entire national economy since ceaselessly muddled beta-version humanoid John Redwood predicted Brexit would be “quick and easy”. That's how it's going.

98. Theresa May, Vogon Poetry in motion, stood up in parliament and opposed the bill, saying: “As a patriot, I would not want to do anything that would diminish this country”

99. As a patriot, she then couldn't be arsed to vote against it

100. Tories said smashing up the NI Protocol was what the people of NI want

101. Only 5% of people in NI want it

102. So we’re about to break international law and endanger peace to achieve a Brexit whose only acknowledged benefits are: adjusting signposts in Dartford Tunnel

103. Straight after the “party of law and order” had voted en-masse to break the law, they moved onto human rights

104. To set the tone, Danny Kruger asserted in parliament that women don’t have a right to autonomy over their own bodies

105. This was just a warm-up for a proposed new Human Rights bill that says your rights can be taken away if you act in any way the govt doesn’t like

106. Immediately afterwards, a protestor was taken away by police officers for saying things the govt doesn’t like

107. The govt will no longer allow “trivial human rights” cases, but it will be up to ministers to decide if it’s trivial

108. And govt is no longer obliged to “actively protect someone’s human rights” – an opt-out so Tories can simply ignore anything protecting your rights

109. The author of the bill, box-faced, thick-necked Play-Doh action figurine Dom Raab, said “we’re focused on fighting crime”

110. And to prove it, Boris Johnson hinted at a snap general election rather than face a parliamentary inquiry into all the crimes he’s committed

111. And then a parliamentary committee was informed that only the PM can approve investigations into his own conduct, which is, quite honestly, the only reason this shit keeps happening. And now they're trying to write that idea formally into law

112. And finally, even as his ministers said he was focusing on crime, chief gibbon Boris Johnson was focused on attempting to illicitly fleece donors for £150,000 to build himself a family tree-house

Despite it all: hope you're OK.

My publishers would be cross if I didn't say my book is coming soon.
unbound.com/books/the-deca…

I'd be cross if I didn't say you can get it slightly cheaper on Amazon (if you've got Prime)
amazon.co.uk/Decade-Tory-in…