Thread by @RussInCheshire

I hate #TheWeekInTory. But that's what it's for, right?

1. The leadership election is down to two: Liz Truss, a Maggie Thatcher knock-off you’d find at Elizabeth Duke, and Rishi Sunak, the chef from Ratatouille having a go at being a lifestyle coach after the rat abandoned him

2. Capt Birdseye impersonator Penny Mordaunt was out after the unexpected failure of her grand vision of a Little Britain where we all team up to “write a theme tune”

3. Instead, Mordaunt tweeted that Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak would “murder the Tory party”

4. I don’t know if they’ve settled on a General Election slogan, but that must surely be in the shortlist

5. If you'll excuse the mixed cutlery metaphor, Nadine Dorries, a woman with a fork in a world of soup, tweeted an image of Rishi Sunak literally stabbing Boris Johnson

6. A Tory MP spoke for us all by tweeting “FFS Nadine! Muted”

7. Others called Dories “disturbing”, “dangerous” and “appalling” – unsurprisingly, less than a year after a Tory colleague was stabbed to death

8. Johnson is probably going put Dorries in the House of Lords

9. Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak set out his stall as the serious candidate with the nicest shoes by announcing his policy for Britain’s own independent renewable energy supply to save money

10. Except the announcement banned onshore windfarms, and backed gas, which is 6x as expensive

11. Experts described his plan as “economic illiteracy”. Remember: he’s the “sensible” one

12. Sunak refused to back windfall taxes on gas giants because it would “prevent them from investing”

13. BP said a windfall tax would not affect its investments at all

14. Truss also said “I don’t believe in windfall taxes”

15. Truss’s former employer is Shell Oil

16. Sensing they were merging into a supercluster of twats, the candidates tried to differentiate themselves over Scotland

17. Truss said she'd "ignore" the country's democracy

18. By contrast, Sunak is proved his love of Scotland by telling everybody he thinks that’s where Darlington is

19. He then said he was the “most northern Chancellor we’ve ever had”

20. He was born in Southampton, went to school in Winchester and Oxford, and works in London

21. Truss said she would “hit the ground from day one”, her bold promise to govern like a shot goose

22. Truss – a former LibDem and former Remainer who is now a Brexiteer on the right of the party – said she had the “determination” and “single-mindedness” of Thatcher

23. In reality contortions around Brexit make her the second-most likely person in the govt to belong in a circus

24. She said the first-most-likely – Boris Johnson – should have remained PM, while actively campaigning to replace him and “rip up his pledges”

25. Then she promised to deliver his pledge to “level up”

26. She would do this by levelling-down wages for public workers in poor areas

27. Then, with the iron will of Thatcher, she u-turned on that plan

28. And then, with the fierce honesty of Johnson, she lied about it

29. She promised that unlike Sunak, she would reduce public spending

30. In 2 days she made £330bn of unfunded spending commitments

31. Think of that as a stack of £10 notes towering 2,277 miles high, or 10x the orbital height of the International Space Station

32. Having promised 10x the requirement to literally walk into space, she said she’d offset that by doing £11bn of cuts for poor people, which abacus fans will recognise a very slightly less than £330bn

33. And then she said she’d “balance the books” (but not her psyche)

34. She was definitely winning over her audience: wildly enthusiastic Truss supporter and Young Tory Anna McGovern told the BBC Truss was “probably the best of a bad lot”

35. Another fervent Tory supporter told the media Truss “lacked charisma”

36. To prove them wrong, Truss did a photo-op with some kids, who’s live-commentary defined the experience as “awkward”

37. After that success, Truss promised a “bonfire of rights”, cos unelected leaders burning printed materials while removing our rights is totally reassuring

38. She said she’ll overturn 2400 pieces of legislation before the next election, which means parliament will have to debate and pass 28 pieces of legislation per day

39. And she plans to do this while sacking 90,000 of the civil servants required to deliver the plan

40. But she’d barely broken sweat. She then said she became a Tory in protest at her terrible education in Leeds

41. Tories were in govt the entire time she was in school

42. And her school was so bad, it got her into Oxford

Let’s take a quick breather to remind ourselves that we genuinely thought Boris Johnson was an exception.

Oh, you suckers. Removing Johnson is like scraping mould off a cheese. Wait a week: it'll be green again

Anyway, have a quick absinthe, and let’s continue...

43. Truss told a live-yet-stupefied TV audience “I’m naturally a thrifty person, I like saving money”

44. Last year she spent £1308 of public money on a single dinner, overruling her own officials who told her to go somewhere cheaper

45. So now the leadership competition is between

- a small-state Remainer who wants to spend £330bn that doesn't exist, and acts like she’s a Leaver;
- and a small-stage Leaver who gave us the highest taxes for 70 years, and acts like he’s a Remainer

46. Let’s don our biohazard suits and visit Priti Patel, the larval form of Miss Trunchbull, who wrote “it is very important to me” to face mandatory scrutiny by the Home Affairs Select Committee

47. She didn't turn up, and hasn’t attended a meeting of the committee since Feb

48. Patel's department doubled-down on her Rwanda plan for thousands of refugees and migrants, saying it had proved “a great success” and was “entirely safe”

49. Rwanda said they only had capacity for 200 people

50. And it’s cost £120m, which is £600,000 per refugee

51. And we haven’t actually sent any refugees yet, cos our courts reckon it's probably illegal

52. And since the plan was launched, the number of migrant crossings has doubled

53. And a parliamentary committee said Rwanda is “not safe enough” and told her to scrap the scheme

54. Hot on the cloven-heels of Patel’s great success, the govt quietly removed commitments to women’s rights and “bodily autonomy” from an international agreement. Totally fine, right?

55. And we still haven’t appointed a science minister, a month after the last one quit

56. Britain now has the worst inflation in the G7, at easily 9%, and predicted to rise to 17%

57. A Bank of England economist said 80% of the reason for our inflation is Brexit

58. And we have the worst economic dip for 300 years

59. And nobody in govt wants to look at facts

60. For example, Suella Braverman, a cross between Torquemada and Secret Squirrel, had accused Channel 4 of “scandalous fake news” when they reported the divorce bill could reach €50bm

61. This week the divorce bill reached €50bn

62. That’s £1517 per household, on top of the £1428 per household Brexit has already cost us in damage to trade

63. So Sunak said he’d sell Channel 4 to “improve standards”

64. There is no comparable plan for selling Suella Braverman. We're stuck with her standards

65. And this week those standards led her - the actual Attorney General - to proposing a ban on lawyers telling govt its policies are unlawful

66. Not to be outdone, Rishi Sunak said people who “vilify Britain” will be treated as extremists

67. Meanwhile Michael Gove (who amongst all the resignations somehow managed to get himself sacked as Boris Johnson’s Emotional Support Turbot) said the govt is “not functioning” and incapable of “essential functions”

68. Presumably this opinion means Sunak has to lock Gove up

69. Last month Jacob Rees-Mogg, a harrowing bewitched dildo who smells like the inside of a grandfather clock, said he wouldn’t serve under any PM but Boris

70. And in Jan he said a General Election should be called if Johnson was ousted

71. But it’s August now, and he's probably sure you've forgotten, so now he’s backing a transition to Liz Truss without a General Election, so he can carry on being Minister for Brexit Opportunities

72. This is a bit like being Minister for Brigadoon

73. Unlike Gove, JRM has avoided Sunak’s prison camps by identifying the only thing he thinks is still working after 12 years of his party being in charge: test cricket

74. Out in the real world, the Port of Dover declared a “critical incident” as daily queues exceeded 12 hours

75. Desmond Swayne, the corpse of Alvin Stardust dipped in Barocca-wee, has spent years loudly demanding an end to free movement across the channel, and is obviously now loudly demanding the ability to move freely across the channel

76. His fellow Tory deep-thinkers called for more French passport checks

77. In Jan Tories turned down a £33m plan to double the number French passport checks

78. And there are no significant queues on the French side anyway, which should be a clue about where the problem lies

79. Planes, trains and automobiles have all ground to a halt, so all four of Grant Shapps arrived, like the Horsemen Of The A-twat-alypse, to denounce rail strikes

80. To fix it, he said he would never, under any circumstances, hold talks to stop the rail strikes. Cool. Cool.

81. The High Court ruled “the govt acted unlawfully” in appointing Dido Harding during the Covid pandemic

82. We have the worst staffing crisis in NHS history, and a cross-party committee described an “absence of any credible govt strategy” for dealing with it

83. But Boris Johnson, a pissed Yeti gorged out of his addled mind on Viagra, but still pretending to be our PM, didn’t bother with a strategy. Instead, he went off to play soldiers

84. First, he spent a day dressing up and pretending to throw hand grenades

85. And then he spent £95,200 of public money to squeeze into a "Top Gunt" outfit and have a go in a fighter jet for an hour

86. And then he threw a “lavish celebration” with Carrie at the home of the billionaire donor behind last year's butler-delivered posh takeaways scandal

87. When people asked Johnson do his job, Tory lickspittle Richard Holden said we should let them “get married in peace”

88. They've been married a year

89. So Johnson said he would now stop being our not-Prime Minister, and go on holiday for the rest of his premiership

You're brave to get this far. Have a breather.

And then, if you can, please consider helping people worse off than yourselves (assuming there are any).

You can give foodbanks run by @TrussellTrust here

trusselltrust.org/make-a-donatio…

And my publishers kind of insist I mention I've got a book coming out, which will be available from Oct, but you can order at a discount on Amazon Prime right now.

It has jokes, and some very kind reviews that I'll be able to share soon.

amazon.co.uk/Decade-Tory-in…