Thread by @shaunjlawson

During the first week or two of the Tory leadership race, I decided to venture over to two VERY dark corners of the internet. The comments sections of the Telegraph and Con Home.

Even by their subterranean standards, I was completely dumbstruck at what I read.

Sunak was being attacked all over the shop: specifically for being a high tax, 'socialist' Chancellor. 🙄

Meanwhile, the choice of the right wing grassroots? The dangerously out of control lunatic Kemi Badenoch - by a very long way.

And why? Because she'd slash taxes! She'd finish off the state altogether! She'd end the 'madness' of net zero!

'Madness' - aimed at ensuring future generations have any kind of habitat at all.

This was 'true conservatism'. Unlike those awful lefties Johnson and Sunak.

In the past, those sort of lunatic positions among the Tory grassroots were precisely what kept them out of power.

But the coup which Brexit and its aftermath represented meant those views, powered by opaque thinktanks funded by the darkest of dark money, gained in influence.

Those commenters - very much on the lunatic fringe as far as the British electorate goes - were exactly the sorts of people who'd be voting in the leadership election.

Reading the comments made me realise Sunak had no chance. Anyone But Rishi would beat him in the run-off.

All those MPs who, against what they really wanted, either voted Truss to trash Mordaunt or voted Sunak to trash Mordaunt condemned their party not just to the wilderness... but to ridicule, loathing, irrelevance and possible extinction.

But in a sense, what's happening now has always been on the cards. Always been completely inevitable in fact.

Not just because the UK economy is a pyramid scheme, a house of cards built entirely on financial services and an insane, utterly unsustainable housing bubble.

It's because when they woke up on 24 June 2016, Tory MPs knew there'd be a devastating reckoning eventually.

Brexit was on them... and Brexit had been built entirely on lies.

What would happen when they were finally rumbled by a furious, betrayed public?

Every 'reinvention' that's followed since has been based on more lies. And more lies. And MORE lies.

Which started with May's preposterous 'red lines', extended through absurd demands to trigger Article 50 before we were ready, then encompassed Johnson's disgusting opportunism.

His lies about 'an oven ready deal'.

His lies about Northern Ireland.

His monstrous prorogation of Parliament and, even worse, electoral success in blaming the failure to pass Brexit on 'enemies of the people' among his own party and across the rest of the House.

His lies about 'levelling up'.

His lies about '40 new hospitals' (total built since 2019: ZERO).

Lies, of course, which were aided and abetted not just by the right wing media and the BBC.

But by a liberal media obsessed with destroying the one man standing against this.

Look at David Frost even now. Loudly fulminating against the deal HE negotiated.

Look at Suella Braverman too. Literally inventing absolute horseshit about "Benefits Street culture" when massive numbers of those on universal credit ARE IN WORK.

Boris Johnson normalised lying at all times and treating lies as exactly equivalent to facts.

Even at his final PMQs, there he was acting as though he - found guilty of breaking the law - was somehow the same as Starmer: who was about to be cleared of breaking the law.

Yet for more than 6 years, there were no consequences for any of these people. Plenty of whom - after railing against 'unelected Brussels bureaucrats' - disappeared off to the Lords.

"I'm Dan Hannan. I want you to take away my job as an MEP. Then I'll become an unelected peer".

Johnson's lies won him the biggest Tory majority since 1987.

His enemies? Most of them were kicked out and deselected, including the last handful of decent Tories who could still remember what their party had once stood for.

So of course he thought he was untouchable.

And of course many of his joke, nauseatingly sycophantic Cabinet thought THEY were untouchable.

Priti Patel: found guilty of bullying. No consequences.

Therese Coffey: buried the publication of a report detailing how benefit sanctions had killed untold numbers of people.

Consequences? Promotion of an overweight smoker who wants to help tobacco companies to... Health Secretary.

Jacob Rees-Mogg. Such a committed Brexiteer he has funds siphoned off in Ireland. Lies for England each and every day.

Consequences? A supporter of fracking becomes Energy Secretary.

James Cleverly. Proof that nominative determinism doesn't always apply. To the Foreign Office!

The Foreign Office, one of the great offices of state - filled by someone who rebranded the Tory twitter account as 'Fact Check UK' in order to pump out never-ending lies during one of the TV debates in 2019.

Liz Truss. Quite unbelievably, the longest survivor in the Cabinet.

Despite having no discernible talent whatsoever.

Wooden, vacant - the woman who believes in 'value for money' while spending millions of public money on her own overseas trips expressly designed to curry publicity for herself.

Or how about Rishi Sunak? Architect of the catastrophic, murderous 'Eat Out To Help Out', how many billions did he lose to furlough fraud again?

Now, things are so completely insane, he's seen as the economic voice of reason!

But here's the thing. In the end, truth will always triumph over lies. In the end, evidence will always defeat nonsense.

Because in the end, if the numbers just don't add up, there will be a reckoning, A whirlwind. It's inevitable.

And the numbers JUST DON'T ADD UP.

God knows why it's taken the markets so ludicrously long to catch on to that - but they have.

With rocketing inflation, a current account deficit from hell, a collapsing pound and Brexit removing the UK's financial breathing space.

And all at a time the government has had to make a HUGE financial intervention... or else.

With regard to which: doing so for 2 years when we have no idea what energy prices will look like next year or the year after is just MORE irresponsibility. MORE recklessness.

Labour's policy on that is quite right. Of course they'd want the freeze extended if prices remain so high - but we just don't know.

6 months funded not by borrowing, but a windfall tax is sensible, responsible, prudent. With more to come *if necessary*.

The government's insane decision to borrow and borrow just means more inflation. As do its equally insane tax cuts.

Among those Telegraph and Con Home commenters, I could not get my head round their utter, wilful obliviousness. Nor that of Badenoch or Truss.

Taxes HAVE to be this high to fund pensions and healthcare for an ever-ageing population.

That's why Britain's post-Brexit immigration policies have been so insane. Just constant self-harm.

Immigrants haven't caused the housing crisis. Wanton failure to build has.

Failure to build which, get this, many Tory MPs insist upon. Because their seats are full of homeowners.

Every last thing about Tory policies since 2016 have been about kicking the can down the road. Again and again and again.

But massive structural problems were always going to rear their head in the end.

You cannot run an economy like the Tories have without there being enormous consequences. Like a whole generation reaching retirement age without owning anything.

Anything at all!

Like so much of the public having no disposable income even BEFORE this runaway crisis.

That's why growth has been so sluggish for so long. The rich hoard, the middle are squeezed, the poor get poorer and the destitute die.

How do you get real growth? By INVESTING of course.

And sustainable investment requires the richest to pay more. Requires things like windfall taxes, wealth taxes and land value taxes.

That's not me being 'political'. It's basic economic common sense.

If you don't do it, infrastructure will crumble. Things just stop working.

If you allow wages to flatline for FOURTEEN YEARS (and counting), eventually, you'll end up with so many people unable to afford the basics or live any kind of decent life that you'll get... exactly what we're seeing now.

Strikes. Fury. Collective action at long last.

Huge numbers of Red Wall MPs actually understand this, hence their horror at recent events.

Cameron, Osborne, Truss and Kwarteng just didn't and don't.

And I don't even want to think about what the NHS is headed for this winter.

The result? Of more than 12 years of wild economic illiteracy and of more than 6 years of public policy all based on lies?

Britain no longer has a government. Really, it doesn't.

We're one of those Third World failed states journalists sit and mock now.

We could disappear completely off the cliff as early as Monday - once we're past the Bank of England's deadline, in other words.

And I don't see anything short of a total U-turn on everything except energy keeping the markets at bay beyond October 31.

If Britain has a de facto Prime Minister now, it's not Liz Truss. It's Keir Starmer.

Who pushed and pushed and pushed the Tory Party into getting rid of their criminal leader. Who came up with the energy price freeze. Who opposed the 45% income tax band elimination.

Going back further, it was him who pushed Johnson into a circuit break in late 2020 and closing schools at the start of 2021 as well.

He leads. Tory MPs eventually follow. And they listen to him in the Commons in silence; they know it's only a matter of time now.

I have no idea whether they'll try and crown Sunak, or try a Sunak/Mordaunt double act, or even go cap in hand to Johnson. All of it would just delay the inevitable.

Things are now so far gone that I wouldn't be that shocked if enough Tory MPs decide the gig is up.

At least some of them probably do see themselves as patriots. And they'll know the national interest couldn't be served less by their lot remaining in office, but absolutely not in power.

Why hang around for all the economic mayhem to come? Cut your losses folks. Go now.

Believe me, the longer they try and cling on, the more poisoned from root to tip their party will be.

The public will never forget this. Ever. Mortgages are going to rise hugely regardless of anything the government does; huge chunks of value will be wiped off Tory voters' homes

I cannot for the life of me see how the Tories remain in government for another 2 years. The circumstances they face - entirely of their own doing - are impossible.

We need a #GeneralElection now. And one way or another, sooner rather than later, I think it's what we'll get too.