Thread by @RussInCheshire

#TheWeekInTory

1. We begin with our new leader, Margarine Thatcher, who in only 3 weeks has become PM, finished off The Queen, taken 2 weeks away from work, ruined our relations with the US, crashed the economy, and started backbench rebellion to remove her from office

2. Having performed 4 cowardly U-turns during her own endless leadership campaign, Truss now seems to now think was is the key to her success

3. So she unthinkingly announced she’d be accompanying the new (yet also very old) King on his tour of Britain

4. She then bravely announced she wouldn’t be doing that at all

5. And then she boldly claimed she’d never said she would

6. Having demonstrated her lack of brain and courage, the PM completed her Wizard of Oz impression by introducing us to her missing heart

7. She lovingly told us tax cuts worth 1800x more for the richest 5% than the poorest 5% were "entirely fair"

8. And in a sign she was ending the grotesque expenditure of Boris Johnson, in her last year at the Home Office she increased dept spending by 45% on items including:

9. Fine dining at luxury restaurants

10. “Extensive supplies from top wineries”

11. £1,840 for Norwich City mementos

12. Luxury wallpaper – does any of this sound familiar – provided by Osborne and Little (George Osborne’s family business)

13. £1,800 on a “wellness” app

14. £4,000 at a top hairdresser (who presumably also does the Thatcher doll at Tussauds )

15. £10,000 at Fortnum and Mason

16. And a £900 adult colouring book, cos we’re now governed by people who don’t read books, merely apply crayons

17. Then she went to the USA, and was so successful the White House said it would suspend the “special relationship”

18. Having assured us a trade deal with USA would be done "in weeks" if we voted for Brexit, Truss now told us there is no possibility of a deal with the USA

19. In a further effort to wipe from our minds the endless squalor and scandal of the Johnson years, her new Chief of Staff features in an FBI bribery investigation, is employed by a lobbying firm and only “seconded” to Number 10, and seems to be using tax-avoiding measures

20. A top Truss backer said of the Chief of Staff: “I've never heard of such an arrangement, and it is obviously quite wrong”

21. So this week the govt changed the rules to make his alleged tax-avoiding measures legal

22. Simon Clarke, a mouse-fart made flesh and shoved into a beige suit, explained the reason the Tories had been complete dogshit for 12 years is that they “haven’t had a clear run” and it had been “crisis after crisis”

23. He voted for all those crises

24. Anyway I’m not sure “it’s too difficult for us” is quite the reassurance he was aiming for

25. He went on to explain that the point of raising National Insurance was to pay for public services, and therefore they were cutting National Insurance to… pay for public services

26. The richest gain most from cutting NI. The poorest gain just 63p. Poverty averted!

27. While Clarke's smooth brain was busy de-fragging, he told viewers the govt was “unapologetically pro-growth”, and then along came Kwazi Kwarteng to shrink the economy by 3% in 3 hours

28. “Great to see sterling strengthening on the back of the new UK Growth Plan” tweeted shaved Afghan hound and Treasury Minister Chris Philp as sterling nosedived to its lowest point in 37 years

29. Philp said “markets will see that the government has a credible and responsible economic plan”

30. The markets nodded sagely, and then immediately crashed

31. So the govt said it refused to comment on the market, which is a shock to point 29

32. It also refused to release analysis by the Office of Budget Responsibility, a sure sign that it’s all gonna be great

33. Kwarteng was overheard saying “Who cares if sterling crashes” at the Groucho club while celebrating Brexit. We are about to find out who cares

34. Kwarteng might be new to some of you, so an intro: he is the former minister for Brexit, then of Business, Energy and Growth.

35. All those things are going just swimmingly, so he’s now been made Chancellor, just in time to hit his devastating peak form

36. Just before his budget, former hedge-fund manager Kwarteng met other hedge-fund managers, and by staggering coincidence when he did his budget reports said “every one of them was shorting the pound”

37. Insider trading carries a sentence of 7 years. Just making you aware

38. Kwarteng also lifted the bankers’ bonus cap

39. Every one of those hedge-funds made millions, and their resulting huge bonuses won’t be taxed

40. Insider trading also carries unlimited fines. Just in case you were wondering

41. Kwarteng then said he would force people who have low paid jobs to get higher paid jobs. I bet that never occurred to them!

42. On a roll – or crack, it’s hard to tell – he cut stamp duty to help the poor. Experts said the cut would raise inflation and only help the rich

43. After Kwarteng did his fiscal event all over our carpet, the pound plunged to the lowest level against the dollar that it has ever been since Alexander Hamilton stopped rapping long enough to invent it in 1776

44. Kwarteng even managed to make the pound tank against the Russian Ruble, which I guess animated thumb Ben Wallace will now claim is proof our tanks are working

45. I present an array of opinions from Tory MPs and former Tory ministers:

46. “Liz is fucked”

47. “It’s a shit show”

48. “Everyone who isn’t mad hates it”

49. “There’s a 10-15% chance it’s genius. There’s a 70-80% chance it’s a disaster”

50. “It's economically reckless and political suicide”

51. “This whole thing boils down to infectious childlike optimism. It would almost be endearing if it wasn’t so completely and utterly fucking mad”

52. “There will come a time where people have to say ‘I know it’ll make us look chaotic, but we can’t go on like this’”

53. “They are already putting letters in as they think she will crash the economy”

54. “It’s the kind of thing that's usually tried in Latin American countries without success”

55.These are her friends, by the way.

56. A banking analyst predicted the £ would drop below $1 in the next couple of weeks – it was at $2 under Gordon Brown

57. Anyway, it all went so brilliantly that Kwarteng has already announced a new fiscal plan on 23 November, a bold prediction about his career chances

58. Work and Pensions minister Chloe Smith escaped from the set of Rings of Power long enough to defend a £55,000 tax cut for millionaires while the £20 Universal Credit uplift is ended

59. Maths fans will be excited to learn £55,000 is 52 years of £20 Universal Credit uplift

60. Meanwhile new Home Secretary Suella Braverman aimed for “New Priti Patel” but landed on “Secret Squirrel struggles with International Law for Dummies”

61. First she told police she “expects them” to cut the number of murders by 20%

62. Not solve them, you’ll notice: just stop them from happening – but she didn’t tell them how or give them any more resources

63. Then she unveiled her not-medically-proven theory that the best antidote to work-related stress is: do more work and relax in front of the TV less

64. But even this bit of political genius is one up on Health Minister and cigar-chomping Uncle Fester impersonator Therese Coffey, who – faced with record breaking waiting lists and the highest Covid hospitalisations in a year – prioritised her war against the Oxford Comma

65. Once her aggressive battle against punctuation choices was out of the way Coffey – part of a govt that inherited an NHS guaranteeing 48 waiting time for GP appointments – promised a grateful public they wouldn’t wait longer than 336 hours

66. In other news: PR giants who were given dodgy Covid contracts are now being given contracts to lead the inquiry into Covid, which sounds much better if you bark it from the back of a truck full of armed blackshirts towards a cowed and terrified public

67. In a sure sign Brexit is going well, the “Brexit bonus” for farmers was scrapped

68. And having howled madly against immigration for years, the govt signalled it plans to allow loads more immigrants

69. And the role of Minister for Brexit Opportunity was abolished

70. This brings us to Jacob Rees-Mogg, a spindly, posturing mantis who was beaten with a Latin phrasebook at an impressionable age, but IMO nowhere near hard enough

71. It was found his “independent consultation” on reintroducing Imperial measurements gave no option to say: no

72. In the face of catastrophic climate disaster Mogg said we “must get every cubic inch of gas out of the North Sea”

73. He then he lifted the ban on fracking after claiming said opposition to fracking was being funded by Putin

74. He is funded by fossil-fuel investors

75. The head of fracking company Cuadrilla said fracking in the UK won’t work

76. Never mind fracking - if there’s a premium on terrible ideas, I want drilling rights to Jacob Rees-Mogg's head

77. And in case you thought it was over, Boris Johnson, London’s very own Witless Dickington, is still here, first telling startled MPs about the great leadership of Vladimir Putin, then reportedly sending Hugo Swire to the House of Lords to annoy David Cameron “for a laugh”

78. A Johnson cabinet minister and senior aide were accused of sexual misconduct

79. The UK announced it would unilaterally ignore the NO Protocol

80. The nation’s most senior Treasury official was sacked for no reason

81. And – tragically – we lost Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted, one-woman riot of idiocy, who vanished from Twitter without warning. Please don’t send flowers: she worries they’d outsmart her

Next month my book comes out, and it would be lovely if you'd buy it. It's very thick, so you can burn it to keep warm, or to roast the roadkill we'll all be surviving on by December.

unbound.com/books/the-deca…