The only heartening thing about the #ToryLeadershipContest#ToryLeadershipFarce is the fact that Tories genuinely believe that the awfulness and mediocrity of the contenders will be acceptable to the country as a whole.
The party seems have lost contact with reality. Unable to see things as they are. Its collective brain hollowed out by Brexit. Fatally compromised by its previous adulation for the worst PM in British history. Only a party like that would even think that people like
Mordaunt or Truss are prime ministerial. Or that they could appeal to wavering voters or the voters who have so comprehensively turned against Johnson. A party that has people like this to offer has lost the plot. And that means, hopefully, we can look forward to the time
A piece of advice friends. If you want to find out about the North, NEVER put your trust in Tory politicians who come bearing imaginary gifts. And before you listen to them, check out the ‘Grim Up North podcast that I co-host with the poet Adrian Scott. Why? Because,
To get an idea of the mindcrushing banality and narcissistic delusionalism of this kind of lying boastfulness, let’s look back in time and imagine how others might have applied this nonsense to the history they were part of, shall we?
Fantastic day out at Yalta. Here I am with Franklin and Marshall Stalin! UK absolutely leading the way in the fight against fascism!
Excellent worldbeating withdrawal from Moscow in freezing conditions! Really showed the Ruskies this time!
This kind of stupidity needs to stop. You don’t defeat a criminal regime by attacking the writers and artists who defined the Russian humanist tradition.
In war like this, and at a time like this, we need to pay MORE attention to this tradition. We should not be hiding it or banning it. Who’s next? Turgenev? Chekhov? Grossman? Akhmatova? Pushkin? Tarkovsky? Shostakovich? Are these artists ‘inappropriate’ now because
of the criminal in the Kremlin? Russia’s artists, perhaps more than any other country, have been victims of autocratic state power, censored and sometimes killed by the state.
Today is #WorldBookDay, so here’s a little thread to remind you why you should BEWARE OF BOOKS. Firstly, they take over your house. They climb up your hallway. Looming over you like they own the place.
Naturally they come swaggering into your study. Like they own the place.
Even when you try to go to bed, they follow you. The ones you’ve read. The ones you’re still reading. The ones you were supposed to be reading but haven’t yet read because some other books have come up to take their place. How dare they? They’re insatiable and SO demanding
The disconnect between the perilous international situation and the fundamental unseriousness of the UK government is genuinely terrifying. We couldn’t have worse politicians at a more dangerous time. To say I’m anxious about the outcome would be understating it considerably.
I mean, it’s not just the ignorance or the narcissism, the endless posturing and smirking photo-ops, the glibness, the constant we-do-it-better-than-anyone else bragging. Or the absence of diplomatic nous from those occupying the major offices of state. This is a government
largely chosen because of its ability to ‘do Brexit’ - a process that has yet to be done and for which these politicians have no serious answers as to how it can be done. It’s a government of Johnson loyalists and abject careerists - the two are not incompatible. An extremist
One of the many morbid consequences of our post-Brexit dystopia is the way its advocates continually pretend everything is the opposite of what it actually is. So that even Truss's humiliation in Moscow is a sign that Russia 'is rattled' by the UK's ineffective diplomacy.
It's the same with everything: mediocre trade deals become dazzling coups; Covid failures become a triumph for the PM; lorry queues are evidence of 'EU bureaucracy' - every failure is dressed up as a success or a failure on someone else's part. Needless to say,
No serious country can continue to do this indefinitely. It may work domestically - for a while. But weakness, chaos, government failure, and declining power will always be visible internationally, especially to countries that want to take advantage of these factors.