Thread by @RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory is here again, dammit

1. We flushed and flushed and flushed, but Boris Johnson keeps bobbing back up

2. This week the horny honey-monster managed to call a no-confidence vote in himself, then forgot he’d done it

3. Regardless, all (but one) Tory MP felt this was absolutely fine

4. Sir Edward Leigh, a shabbily upholstered Chesterfield crammed into a blazer he found at a regatta, defended Johnson on the grounds that he is not "a mass murderer". And who among us expects more from our PM?

5. Johnson proved he learned his lesson about lying to parliament, and that lesson was: I’m great at lying to parliament

6. He told MPs “We have rounded up those county lines drugs gangs, 1500 of them so far"

7. This is actually the number of telephone lines closed down

8. In the competition to replace him, Tom Tugendhat was cheered hugely by the public for being the only candidate to say Johnson is a liar

9. His fellow MPs then cheered yet more Johnson lies in parliament

10. And then Tories eliminated Tugendhat from the leadership contest

11. Tom Tugendhat tweeted “We are only as strong as we are united”, which will surprise [checks notes] Tom Tugendhat, who tweeted his opposition to people becoming stronger by uniting to strike for more pay

12. So 10 days after kicking Johnson out for being an incompetent liar in whom they had no confidence, Tories voted complete confidence in him

13. Having proved he was still PM-material, Johnson immediately blew-off a COBRA crisis meeting so he could throw himself a party

14. Kit Malthouse was asked “where was the PM” this weekend, and said “I don’t know”

15. He should have known, cos it was rumoured Malthouse was at the same party

16. And then the PM went off for a day playing at Top Gunt, in an orgiastic spasm of Mr Benn dressing-up

17. Suella Braverman – a cross between Torquemada and Secret Squirrel – reassured the voters she would gleefully remove any protection from them being tortured

18. Somehow this wasn’t quite the selling point she had imagined, and she was also eliminated from the election

19. Braverman said she was “blown away” by the support she’d received from her fellow MPs, “if not in their votes, then in their hearts”

20.Wait until she finds out they don’t have hearts either

21. Feral gonad Nadhim Zahawi used the hashtag NZ4PM, but if you visited NZ4PM.com you were redirected to Penny Mordaunt’s campaign

22. Given their record it's surprising, but Tory MPs didn’t take to this demonstration of vast ineptitude, so Zahawi was out too

23. It’s probably for the best: imagine if we ended up with a PM steeped in scandal, such as the one gathering around Zahawi’s £26m of “mystery loans” and his opaque tax affairs. He'll have to just remain chancellor

24. So let’s have a look at the surviving candidates

25. Rishi Sunak boasted of his “seriousness” and “competence”, and said his greatest weakness is “striving too hard for perfection”

26. Behind him was a Ready For Rishi sign in which he’d misspelled the word “campaign”

27. You’d think backbench nonentity Jack Brereton would be a natural Sunak supporter: he published a poster in which he quite genuinely threatened to “continue the levelling of Stoke-on-Trent” (you lucky constituents) and then spelled his own name wrong

28. Brereton is actually backing Mordaunt, a 3D printout of Captain Pugwash who in a baffling statement seemed to suggest her great weakness is delegating responsibility to her Burmese cat.

29. And Kemi Badenoch modestly claims her weakness is she is – if anything – TOO funny

30. Meanwhile Elizabeth Truss (anagram: haziest bluster) said her weakness is being “over-enthusiastic”, certainly compared to anybody who has ever met her

31. Sadly, that's a small number: since the campaign began she hasn’t been brave enough to do a single broadcast interview

32. Sunak, who when he’s not being a master of detail is a Sensei of removing his jacket for Instagram, is still favourite to win

33. As a sign of how good he is, he’s got the lowest % of votes for any leadership candidate since Ted Heath in 1974. And Sunak is the popular one

34. Penny Mordaunt set out her bold new direction following Johnson. Here is week one of the new direction:

35. She began by being accused of lying about her naval record

36. Then she did a u-turn on one of her signature policies

37. Then she said “you can’t break promises to a partner”, while saying we can break the promises we made in the Northern Ireland Protocol

38. She also ignored scientific evidence and backed homeopathy (or as doctors call it, a glass of water)

39. Then she did some dressing up in a uniform she seemingly doesn’t have the rank to wear

40. And then Lord Frost told everybody she “did not master the details” necessary to do her job

41. Then she denied her lies about Turkey were lies at all (they were)

42. And then Mordaunt, who had fought her seat in 2019 campaigning on the slogan “Get Brexit Done” and promising an “Over Ready Deal” said that in 2022 she would “Get Brexit re-Done”

43. Well: that all sounds totally different from Johnson! Well done, Cap'n Penny.

44. David Davis – so good they named him once – rocked up to support Mordaunt, with the bedraggled mien of somebody who had recently eaten quite a lot of tablets, and had spent the subsequent days investigating a bin during quite a heavy finale at Creamfields

45. Across town, Liz Truss made a speech assuring us she was “ready to lead”, and then immediately got quite arrestingly lost while vainly trying to leave a very small room that had just one door, through which she had entered barely 10 minutes before. Reassuring, innit?

46. Truss continued to demonstrate her quite lavishly scattered wits by claiming she became a Conservative because she felt “let down” by the school she had attended in Leeds

47. The Tories were in charge the entire time Liz Truss was at school in Leeds

48. Kemi Badenoch said she wanted to be Britain’s first black PM

49. It looks more likely she might end up becoming Britain First’s black MP, after that far-right fascist organisation publicly endorsed her

50. Badenoch said she had strong principles and opposed Net Zero

51. 2 days later it got hot, so now she supports Net Zero

52. Proud of her “honest politics”, she said “I know what it’s like flipping burgers at 16, on min wage”

53. The min wage didn’t exist when she was 16

54. Oh, and Kemi Badenoch voted against raising that minimum wage. Obvs

55. She might have endlessly malleable views, but she is focussed on the big issues: she wants to start a fight with Ben & Jerry’s for being “woke”, presumably on the basis she thinks ice-cream is sentient

56. It certainly appears more sentient than YTS-kid Rishi Sunak or taxidermised vole Liz Truss, who both want us to believe they alone can stand up to Putin, but made Sky cancel the next leadership debate because they both chickened out

57. While this was going on, Priti Patel couldn’t be arsed turning up to a parliamentary committee on her Rwanda Policy

58. And Dominic Raab couldn’t be arsed turning up to a session on his Bill of Rights policy

59. Cos who needs scrutiny? They’ve all done brilliantly so far

60. Meanwhile Matt Hancock - PeeWee Herman reflected in the back of a spoon – hosted a radio show as an attempt at rehabilitation, which descended with horrifying inevitability into him nodding in weepy silence while callers told him he was a fucking terrible human being

61. Two years into the Tory Party's centrepiece “levelling up” policy, the north-south divide in incomes has widened by 30%

62. The Tory Crime Commissioner was banned from driving after being caught speeding 5 times in 12 weeks.

63. And as these squabbling wangs argued about whether ice-cream approves of statues of slavers, Covid cases rose to 3.5 million, the tarmac at Luton airport melted, UK pay fell at the fastest rate on record, and 14.5 million slipped into poverty

64. It is still only Tuesday

Anyway, look - I hope you're OK. I genuinely do.

If you're lucky enough to be able to help, please consider helping your local foodbank.

You can do it in person by visiting, or go to trusselltrust.org/make-a-donatio… to donate to one of the larger charities.

Thanks folks