I wish it was an exaggeration, but it is only 3 days since my last #TheWeekInTory, his is the 4th in a week, and... here we go again.
Like the shoe-stretchers my mum got me for Christmas, they're the stinky gift that keeps on giving.
Let's dive in...
1. Previously on The Week In Tory: thermonuclear tribunal magnet Boris Johnson battled to survive, as Steve Baker told the BBC “I believe the Conservative Party is the only party capable of good government”, and just behind him over half of that government resigned
2. In a stunning return to form, prognosticator of prognosticators Jacob Rees-Mogg, that disturbing merger between The Child Catcher and the concept of rickets, predicted Boris Johnson would remain as PM for 20 years
3. Johnson resigned the same day
4. But being Johnson, his resignation didn’t achieve a fucking thing, because he is still PM
5. His own party described his not-really-a-resignation as “Revolting” and “Ridiculous”, and one cabinet minister who remained loyal to Johnson said “That speech was a fucking disgrace”
6. Because Johnson is now out of power, he remained in power, and not only appointed a new cabinet but also invented a completely new job as a reward for top supporter Peter Bone, a child’s drawing of their vampire grandad
7. If you thought the last lot of ministers was bad…
8. The new Northern Ireland secretary had to ask officials if he needed a passport to go to Northern Ireland
9. And new appointee Sarah Dines attempted to excuse Chris Pincher sexually assaulting people by saying the fact the victim was gay “doesn’t make it straightforward”
10. And another over-promoted mediocrity, Lia Nici, began her ministerial career by repeating the disproven slur that the deputy leader of the opposition had spread her legs in parliament to distract the poor PM
11. Anyway, on this occasion it seems Leave does not mean Leave
12. Johnson said he had learned from mistakes over parties, and that’s why his main reason for staying in office was so he could continue to use the country house which is the PM’s official residence, because he'd scheduled a massive party there
13. The PM then reassured the nation he would announce no new policies, because he didn't have a mandate
14. Three hours later he announced a new policy which was - you'll be amazed to hear - yet another cut to social care, which broke yet another of his own election promises
15. Johnson also admitted that while he was foreign secretary, he had held a secret meetings with a known senior KGB agent, who he met during his weekend getting absolutely hammered at the “anything goes” party palace of a billionaire friend (who he later ennobled)
16. This week’s sex scandal was a leaked recording of Johnson offering a job to a woman he’d had an affair with
17. This replaced last week’s sex scandal, which featured Johnson offering a different job to a different woman he’d had an affair with
18. And that replaced the previous week’s sex scandal, where he’d been found getting a blowjob off that women in his official govt office
19. And that replaced a sex scandal relating to rumours he’s got his hairdresser pregnant and she’d had to move to Canada and go into hiding
20. Anyway: blowjob woman – try to keep up – is now his current wife, and as we face devastating cuts to benefits, leaks revealed she and Johnson blew £200,000 to terrifyingly vajazzle their Downing St flat, which included thousands of pounds spent on *literal* gold wallpaper
21. Despite spending over £3000 on a replica of the drinks cabinet Rudolf Nureyev owned – the ownership of which is vital to leading a nation, as I’m sure we all agree – their defenders waved aside their profligacy by insisting Boris and Carrie “didn’t even have a salad bowl”
22. Anyway, Johnson’s lucky successor now faces a (presumably quite short) career surrounded by the sort of baroque decorative horrors normally only seen when intrepid reporters follow revolutionaries into a gaudy, despotic presidential compound
23. Disgusted by Johnson’s greed, Michelle Donelan quit as Education Secretary after just 31 hours, but still took her £17,000 severance
24. This week's 3rd Education Secretary is James Cleverly, a stunningly successful one-man campaign to disprove nominative determinism
25. Cleverly uncleverly packed his team with talent, starting with Andrea Jenkyns, who had just been filmed cosplaying as an irradiated lemon, and flipping the bird while shouting “just you wait and see” at voters, which I assume she did out of respect
26. She was joined in Education by Brendan Clarke-Smith, who, while 170,000 of us died from Covid, had jokingly posed naked with a mask on his penis, in a mockery of those demanding basic healthcare measures.
27. Those three are now in charge of Education
28. As part of their earnest campaign to finally get an honourable leader scandal-ridden Johnson, the candidates leaked dossiers listing the involvement by their rivals in drugs, using prostitutes, tax dodges, illegal loans, and secret illegitimate children
29. 15 candidates have put their names forward, or 11 if you only count Grant Shapps once
30.Priti Patel is tipped to stand, unperturbed by the fact her flagship Rwanda policy is not only illegal, but that the small-boat migration it "fixes" has doubled since she announced it
31. In fact Patel, the Garden Gnome of Sauron, has done so well that the Royal Navy has now threatened to “walk away” from its job of stopping migration, because her policy has, in their words, “spectacularly backfired”.
32. Under party rules you only need 8 supporters to stand, but Ben Wallace – who was favourite just 3 days ago – couldn't even scrabble together that many, so has decided to remain being simultaneously our defence minister and a life-model for ornamental rubber doorstops
33. Don’t feel too sorry for Ben Wallace, because reports say he’s been discovered taking £10,000 donations from a law firm lobbying to overturn UK sanctions on Putin, which falls under the defence portfolio of … let me check … oh yes, Ben Wallace
34. Liz Truss - Cunk on Foreign Relations – has decided to turn the tide on the massive unpopularity and failure of Johnson, and her strategy was to label herself “Boris Johnson continuity candidate”, proving she understands this as much as almost everything else
35. We also welcomed Sajid Javid, a cartoon of pure greed superimposed onto a competitively evil gonad, who this week was described as “a complete shit” by one of his own backers
36. Javid's pitch to the nation is based on his competence, and I suppose only overseeing the worst health waiting lists in history while ignoring basic precautions over Covid is a step up from his predecessor, Milk Tray Man cosplayer Matt Hancock, who fiddled while 180,000 died
37. Jeremy Hunt has decided to stand as the least-insanely-right-wing candidate, and chose Esther McVey as his running mate, describing her as a “star”
38. If she's a star, it's a white dwarf, in that she’s incredibly dense, and generates absolutely no new material
39. Hunt needs to win over his party of economic geniuses who left us with the slowest recovery from recession in history, the highest debt for 200 years, highest tax since 1947, highest inflation for 50 years, most expensive housing in Europe, and the worst economy in the G8
40. To do this he wants to reduce corporation tax – already one of the lowest in the OECD – to 15% so we can compete with NOBODY BECAUSE WE’RE ALREADY LOWEST
41. And then, fully attuned to the needs of the country, he said his top priority was to end the ban on fox hunting
42. Meanwhile Nadhim Zahawi, the cross testicle now in charge of our money, had an extraordinarily productive first 4 days in office
43.He announced an end to austerity (the 17th “end of austerity” pledge since 2019), and then 3 days later promised 20% more austerity cuts
44. Meanwhile he lost half his staff, campaigned to sack his boss, and got investigated by the National Crime Agency and his own department. All in four days.
45. He followed up by HMRC announcing they had “red flagged” him over his opaque tax affairs before he even got the job
46. HMRC said a red flag is enough to stop you from getting an MBE, so “the idea he could be chancellor or even prime minister is unbelievable”
47. Fellow candidate Grant Shapps refused to get drawn into trans culture wars, the first time he's ever been clear about identity
48. Even so, one MP said “The last time Grant said he'd help me win an election I nearly ended up in prison”, so I think we’ll put him in the “maybe” column
49. Rishi Sunak is standing for PM so he can overturn the disastrous economic legacy of Rishi Sunak
50. He’s campaigning in the belief that the nation wanted to get rid of the guy who was fined for illegally partying, and would now vote for the other guy who was fined for illegally partying
51. It’s going well: his fellow MPs described Sunak as “a treacherous bastard”
52. “Honesty Candidate” Rishi was chancellor of UK while avoiding tax by registering as citizen in another country, claiming his wife didn’t pay tax cos she was from a 3rd, being paid by a trust fund in a 4th, and secretly breaking the rules of his job to hide money in a 5th
53. Sunak told the media he is a “serious candidate for serious times”, which will come as a shock to those who remember the actual chancellor being unable to work out how to use a credit card when he was paying for petrol in the Kia Rio he pretended he drove
54. To make himself relatable, Sunak won't answer questions about how many billions he’s worth, cos “I'll probably get it wrong”
55.Equally ept Tory MPs sent completely independent tweets backing Sunak, but forgot to remove the instruction “add your own infographic below”
56. Steve Baker’s opening – and, as it turned out, closing – gambit was a campaign based around a riddle in the style of an optician’s sight test, upon which was superimposed a photo of Baker with what looked like a meat cleaver through his head
57. His campaign lasted less than 8 hours, but he greeted reality’s latest challenge to his fantasy world in his traditional style, displaying the ever-so-pleased look of a man who is simply desperate to be asked if he’s finished his Rubik’s Cube yet
58. He immediately lent his backing to Suella Braverman, a human-sized gerbil that has mindlessly gnawed through very nearly half of a borrowed copy of International Law for Dummies
59. Also backing Braverman is Desmond Swayne, the reanimated corpse of Alvin Stardust
60. Penny Mordaunt, who is a real person and not a minor Addams Family character, has all we expect from a prospective Tory PM - she's a former magicians assistant who impressed the public by failing to make it into the top 10 in a celebrity diving show on ITV2
61. Mordaunt pitched herself as the Competency Candidate, and to prove it her inspiring campaign video was based around footage of convicted killer Oscar Pistorius, a murdered Labour MP, and a Paralympian who hadn't given permission to appear, and demanded to be removed
62. So the Mordaunt campaign had to be relaunched less than 2 hours after it started, which is easily 1 hour and 53 minutes longer than anybody expected Mordaunt's campaign to remain in one piece
63. It is rumoured that cursed dildo Jacob Rees-Mogg will also throw his top-hat into the ring, and if he teams up with Penny Mordaunt we can simply cancel parliament and replace it with repeats of The Munsters
64. Also standing - sorry, I know this is taking a while - is Kemi Badenoch, the former equalities minister who opposes equality, refuses to condemn conversion therapy, mocked gay marriage, and published a much-mocked report denying the existence of racist police
65. She described herself as possessing a “nimble centre-right vision”, and somehow managed to misuse all of those words
66. Tom Tugendhat demonstrated how much the public wanted him, by publishing an opinion poll in which his name didn't even appear
67. Having ethically demanded more thought, nuance and depth than Johnson's cretinous habit of endlessly repeating three-word-slogans, Tugendhat launched a campaign using a TWO-word-slogan, and repeated "clean slate" about 16 times during a 2-minute TV appearance
68. His grasp of detail is such that his proposed solution to Brexit is to form a new mini-EU comprising neighbours who aren't part of the EU. It would contain the UK, Ireland (already in the EU), Sweden (already in the EU) and Norway (associated with the EU as part of the EEA)
69. Tugendhat - remember, this is the clever one - went on to explain that he could solve the NI crisis because he’d fought for his country, although I’m not sure if “I’m a British soldier and want to have a fight” is as quite likely to defuse tensions in Belfast as Tom thinks
70. Rehman Chishti was seemingly invented merely so he could be defeated, like a nameless pre-titles bad guy in a Bond movie
71. Research found only 27% of his own constituents know he exists
72. Chishti pretty much guaranteed his return to obscurity by launching his bid for power with a publicity photo that aimed for "staring at manifest destiny" but landed on "I can't work out how to use the toilet on this train"
73. And bewitched thumb Mark Jenkinson tweeted that his campaign would involve blowing smoke up his arse and promising the moon on a stick. I'm not joking. He really did.
74. Anyway, polling shows the highest-rated potential leader is Dominic Raab, who isn’t even standing
75. Raab scores a mighty 4%, and is – I repeat – the most popular candidate. Nobody that is actually standing got more than 3%
76. And even the pointless Raab was massively beaten by candidates called “None of the above” (30%) and “Don’t know” (28%)
77. But to prove they're all completely different to the widely-hated Boris Johnson, every single candidate backs Johnson-era austerity for the poor, tax cuts for the rich, illegally shipping people off to Rwanda, removing your human rights, and trashing international law
78. This last one – illegally breaching the NI Protocol – has this week led to the govt being sued for millions in compensation by our own ports, who were forced by the govt to spend a fortune on Brexit protocols, which are now being illegally cancelled by the govt
79. Meanwhile, Johnson’s final straining turd into the recoiling palm of a disgusted nation – his resignation honours list
80. Amongst those expecting to join the 768 unelected members of the House of Lords (the Commons only has 650 members) are the following dignitaries:
81. There is Paul Dacre, gigantic Boris Johnson fan and former Daily Mail boss, who, as guardian of our national morals, listens so little and bellows “cunt” so often that his meetings have become known as “the vaginal monologues”
82. And finally, Nadine Dorries, the dumbfungled physical manifestation of a fight outside Greggs, who may soon become a peer with a life-long say over our national politics, despite being out of her depth on a sheet of graphene
Times are hard. I hope you're all OK.
If you can help a food-bank, please do. That's the priority right now.
If, after that, you still have a bit of spare cash, I've got a book coming out, which explains how we got here. With jokes.
Here is a not-so-short thread about why you should never choose @ScottishPower. I don't mean "hey, they could be worse". I mean NEVER EVER CHOOSE THEM.
I hope they read this thread and hang their heads in shame.
In Nov 2018 I moved into a new-built house. By default, Scottish Power were the gas/electric suppliers.
SP don't have a renewables-only tariff, so before I even moved into the property I used their own service to change supplier, and assumed I would never hear from SP again.
Last month - over 4 years later - 2 bills arrived.
They totalled £7,938, and I had 6 days to pay.
SP hadn't completed my transfer to a new supplier properly. I assumed I was paying my new supplier for gas and electricity - I was actually just paying for gas.
Our system was so badly gamed because it is still based on the "decent chaps" theory of govt. All it takes is people who aren't decent chaps, and it all falls apart.
Ideas for how a new govt could begin fix things. Perfect? No. But suggest better rather than criticising🧵
Set up a manifesto comparison site. Parties enter SPECIFIC pledges, SPECIFIC budgets, SPECIFIC yearly targets.
Example: we will spend £40bn on 200,000 houses by 2024.
If you can't state your goal, budget and timetable, you don't have a plan. Those are the basics.
All parties pledge, so voters know what they're getting. No more manifestos saying "we believe in Britain". It means fuck all.
To enforce pledges, if a party misses more than 20% of its annual targets, a general election is called automatically.
Brexit is a biblical curse that is ruining us. Johnson, it's chief architect has already started smashing it up, breaking international law.
Now he has nothing to lose, so will he attempt more destruction? Or will saner (ha!) voices in the party stop him?
Johnson's Levelling Up agenda has so far done absolutely nothing, and we have no money, a massive financial crisis coming in Aug, and a party that refuses to do any redistribution. Plus, the Levelling Up team has almost all quit.
Will anyone want to run it? Will it vanish?
Half the party wants to fix public finances by increasing taxation on those who can afford it. The other half wants to cut taxes for the wealthy on the bewildering assumption that they'll suddenly spend all the money they've thus far hoarded.
I've been struggling to think of anything to put into #TheWeekInTory. Quiet, innit?
Only kidding. It's an absolute casserole. This is the 3rd of these in 6 days, and is almost certainly already out of date.
Regardless, this is my life now, and I'm taking it out on you...
1. Boris Johnson became the third successive Tory Prime Minister to have their career destroyed by Boris Johnson
2. Always stickers for tradition, the Tories first promised, and then proved completely incapable of Getting Exit Done
3. This all began with the resignation of Oliver Dowden, the Minister Without Portfolio
4. After 43 resignations in 24 hours, we ended up having portfolios without ministers, including the govt’s flagship Levelling Up Dept, which was, irony of ironies, absolutely flattened
What's the plan? And bear in mind these people are professional politicians.
Option 1:
Johnson survives to the next election
Option 2:
Johnson staggers on for months but falls before election
Option 3:
Johnson lasts 6 weeks at best
Option 4:
Johnson goes now
🧵
Option 1:
Rolling disaster, constant rebellion, likely moves by 1922 committee, and hard to deliver any policy cos of constant firefighting. Still faces a parliamentary inquiry into PartyGate lies. In the unlikely event he survives until a GE, he'll lose it massively.
Option 2:
Maybe he can limp on for a few months, but haemorrhaging votes. After he goes there won't be time for a new leader to rescue much before a GE, and it'll still be an electoral disaster for Tories, who will all be soiled by supporting Johnson against public wishes.
It’s only a couple of days since I did #TheWeekInTory, and here I am again because – oh hell, you already know why.
Anyway, here we go, you lucky, lucky bastards
1. Chris Pincher was accused of groping 2 men after getting indescribably pissed
2. He did it in a place that’s – genuinely – called “Cad’s Corner” in one of the Tory Party’s favourite members-only clubs, and nothing says “this unacceptable behaviour was totally unexpected” like providing it with a designated venue
3. Pincher resigned, but Boris Johnson, the randy yeti who is still, at the time of writing, our Prime Minister, didn’t withdraw the whip from him
4. Pincher had already had to resign as a whip in 2019 for groping people
5. And faced investigates into groping in 2017 too