Russ Jones Profile picture
Oct 20 40 tweets 8 min read
Boy, am I glad I waited until after 1:30 to do #TheWeekInTory

1. It seems an age, but only 6 days ago Elizabeth Truss, an anagram of Haziest Bluster, promised parliament she “absolutely” stuck to her leadership promise of “not planning public spending cuts”
2. She then sacked her chancellor for agreeing with her, and appointed demonic pixie Jeremy Hunt, who promised £40 billion of cuts

3. Hunt was immediately undermined by reports Truss had asked feral gonad Sajid Javid to come back as chancellor, but Javid said: no fucking way
4. Truss brains-trust member Jason Stein said it didn't happen cos the PM “sat in the cabinet with Javid for 10 years" and "knows who is shit”

5. So Truss sacked her brains-trust

6. Another aide said Truss “pretended her relatives had died” to get out of going out in public
7. So Margarine Thatcher managed to sack her ex-chancellor, undermine her current chancellor, piss off her alternative chancellor, kill several relatives, and lose her valued advisors in only 2 days

8. Her efficiency drive has made Truss simultaneously Betty *and* Frank Spencer
9. Truss has spent her entire career as PM (and by “career” I’m using the definition that means “to move fast and without control”) promising to protect pensions

10. Hunt refused to say they were protected

11. Then Truss said she was "absolutely committed" to protect pensions
13. And then No 10 said they were “no longer committed to” protecting pensions

14. All in one day

15. Last week Truss said Labour’s energy price policy showed “they have no plan and aren’t serious about governing”

16. “No plan / not serious” is now Truss’s energy price policy
17. Hunt U-turned on every single major policy, except the one about making bankers richer while we all starve

18. Truss said she did this to “provide economic stability”

19. The markets immediately fell again
20. To provide more "stability", she then performed a scatty and distracted press conference in which she gave identical answers to all 4 questions, regardless of subject

21. It lasted 8 minutes

22. The song American Pie is 8 minutes 42 second long

23. The markets fell again
24. Christopher Chope, a child’s drawing of their vampire grandad who quite clearly hadn't noticed LITERALLY EVERYTHING, claimed tax is at an "all-time high" and corporation tax should not be increased

25. Under Thatcher, corporation tax was 52%

26. It is currently 19%
27. Truss, out of her depth on a sheet of graphene, then agreed to answer urgent questions in Parliament

28. She didn’t turn up

29. Instead, Captain Pugwash cosplayer Penny Mordaunt reassured MPs about our great leader
30. Mordaunt, who claims to be good at this shit, boasted that Truss wasn’t “hiding under a desk”, but was doing something more important than *running the country*

31. Number 10 said Truss was meeting Graham Brady, even though Brady was actually sat in the chamber at the time
32. Perhaps Brady was avoiding going into his office, where – despite the rules saying they’d be ignored – it was reported at least 100 letters of no confidence were landing

33. His room must look like that time the Dursleys refused to let Harry go to Hogwarts
34. No 10 said Truss was “fucking busy”, which makes a change from Boris Johnson, who let the country fall apart cos he was busy fucking

35. While Mordaunt continued to explain why the PM wasn’t there, Truss turned up and sat counting her blinks in baffled silence
36. To put a positive spin on things, a delighted Downing St briefed that Truss had got through an entire cabinet meeting without any minister telling her to quit

37. Nadine Dorries said “I cannot imagine there’s one G7 country which thinks we’re worthy of a place at the table”
38. Truss polled at 7%, making her 3% less popular than our 10% rate of inflation

39. Tories suggest Hunt should be installed as PM

40. Only 45 days ago Hunt got the backing of just 18 MPs, although polling suggests this will constitute a majority after the next election
41. Being Tory Leader is like being Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher: every idiot fancies a go, nobody last long, and there's a good chance you'll bump into Voldemort's soul

42. The mention of evil brings us neatly to Suella Braverman, aka Joseph Gerbils
43. She blamed the nation’s troubles after being in charge for 12 years on “the Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”

44. After her battle with tofu, Heinrich Hamster - I mean Suella Braverman – resigned, leaping from Hard Bean Curd to Has-Been Turd in a single bound
45. So Truss has added yet another vengeful ex-minister to the pile. She promised growth. She didn't say of what.

46. Braverman lasted 43 days in her job, which one day less than mooning twat David Blaine spent in that Perspex box
47. Braverman said she'd gone because of a “technical infringement of the rules”, which turned out to be: another incidence of sharing confidential govt documents, for which she already got an official reprimand just one week ago
48. Steve Baker – who managed to get himself called “a cunt” on live TV by Krishnan Guru-Murthy – then claimed Truss wants to reappoint Braverman to her cabinet in the new year

49. I hate to break it to you, Steve, but ...
50. Events have overtaken Baker and Braverman but regardless, she was unlikely to return, claiming she quit over "concerns about the direction of this government", although if she'd hung around another half hour the direction would have changed
51. Anyway, those concerns about direction will be soothed now, cos her successors, Grants Shapps, can face in 4 different directions at once

52. Shapps is Truss's 2nd Home Secretary, but makes up for being 3rd rate by there being at least 4 of him
53. Four days ago Shapps was showing off his spreadsheet of Tory MPs keen to topple Truss

54. Three days ago he was made Home Secretary working for Truss, while she overturned the policies of - herself - and Hunt enacted the policies of Rishi Sunak

55. Time for a sedative?
56. Helpfully, Thérèse Coffey can get you some, cos she’s been found handing out unprescribed medicines to her friends and families, which is illegal

57. Having risked lives and stoked antibiotic resistance, the health secretary then prevented action on obesity and smoking
58. Dan Poulter – ex Tory minister and GP – said the health secretary's “ultra-libertarian” stance would cost lives

59. And so, onto fracking

60. The Tory manifesto on which they were all elected, says they’d continue the ban unless evidence showed it didn’t cause earthquakes
61. The only active UK fracking site caused 192 earthquakes in 182 days

62. So Jacob Rees-Mogg – the mind of a tapeworm tragically trapped in the body of a different tapeworm – said he wants more of it
63. Labour put down a motion to continue the ban, which (reminder) is literally Tory policy

64. So obviously Tory backbenchers were ordered to vote for a massively unpopular and dangerous policy that goes against their own manifesto, cos that's where we are now
65. The Deputy Chief Whip wrote to all Tory MPs, emphasising “This is not a motion on fracking. *This is a confidence motion in the Govt.*”

66. Then – 10 mins before the vote – banjaxed climate minister Graham Stuart told PMs “Quite clearly this is not a confidence vote”
67. Then, in the middle of the night, No 10 emailed journalists to tell them it definitely, definitely was a confidence vote

68. And then the next morning the transport secretary said it wasn’t

69. Around 40 bewildered Tories said they’d vote to keep the ban on fracking
70. The result of this exotic experiment with anarchy was: Tory MPs were seen engaging in scuffles outside the voting lobbies, one whip ended up in tears, and the chief whip was heard to said, “I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck anymore”
71. Rees-Mogg was seen "shouting and bullying" other MPs, which must be like getting mooed at by a cursed bassoon

72. It’s reported a gang including Rees-Mogg and Coffey literally picked up a crying MP who was voting against them, and pushed him into their own voting lobby
73. A palpably furious Charles Walker told the BBC it was “inexcusable”, “a shambles and a disgrace”, and railed against his own “talentless” govt

74. The whips both resigned

75. Half an hour later the whips both magically un-resigned. Perhaps they bullied themselves into it
76. Then it turned out Liz Truss herself didn’t vote in the a confidence vote on Liz Truss

77. The following day Number 10 claimed she DID vote, but “forgot to swipe her pass”

78. Rees-Mogg responded: “This is a govt that is functioning well”
79. Meanwhile it’s reported Truss’s top strategist arranged for Kwasi Kwarteng and Nadhim Zahawi to meet with a Libyan warlord connected to a Putin-affiliated mercenary group

80. Neither Kwarteng or Zahawi registered the meeting in the official record. Cool. Cool.
81. Polls show an election tomorrow would see Tories reduced from 365 seats in 2019 to *48* seats, making the SNP the official opposition

82. In a stunning return to form, Kwarteng, the Oracle of Spelthorne, predicted Truss had “bought herself a few weeks” to steady the ship
83. “I’m a fighter not a quitter” said Truss, and then quit

84. She said she had tried to deliver on the promise of Brexit

85. What promise? Brexit has reduced trade by 16% and costs us more than twice as much as the forthcoming austerity cuts
86. We now face a one-week emergency process to find a new leader of this gobshite conga, who will not elected by you, me, or any Tory members

87. James Heappey admitted not a single member of the cabinet had pointed out any problems with the mini-budget
88. And Tories are now looking for a new prime minister drawn from this bunch of geniuses

89. Although it might be non-minister Rishi Sunak, the chef from Ratatouille having a go at being a motivational speaker after being abandoned by the rat
90. Anyway: in just 4 months we’ll have had 3 Prime Ministers, 4 Chancellors, and 3 Home Secretaries, and we haven't even got started on the inevitable reshuffles, sackings and vindictive recriminations

91. And it’s only Thursday
The good news is - nope. It's all bad. But if you're lucky enough to have a spare fiver, please consider giving it to a foodbank.

trusselltrust.org

I have to mention my book (contractual obligation), but foodbank first, please.

unbound.com/books/the-deca…

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More from @RussInCheshire

Oct 20
The problem - and I use the word entirely incorrectly - is that there's no such thing as The Conservative Party.

There are five, each with massively different goals and ideals, artificially crammed together because of the FPTP system.

And this weird hybrid is disintegrating.🧵
The Tories are

1. One Nation Conservatives, who would be recognisable to Ken Clark, and are - at the margins - interchangeable with some Lib Dems. Mercer. Wallace

2. Xenophobic English nationalists, basically UKIP, obsessed with immigration and sovereignty, eg Braverman, Patel
3. Wild-eyed libertarians who believe in the Sovereign Individual, and all the madness Liz Truss just unleashed. Drax. Raab. Kwarteng.

4. Scatty populist bullshitters, who say and do anything to remain in power but have no plan or ideals - Johnson, Dorries and that sordid crew
Read 8 tweets
Oct 14
#TheWeekInTory

tl:dr – AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHH!!!

I’m sorry. This is the biggest yet.

So drink heavily, and let’s begin what seems 1000 years ago, but was actually this week

[ Cue wobbly flashback effect ]🧵
1. Parliament demanded this week’s Prime Minister, Margarine Thatcher, appoint an ethics adviser, despite Truss insisting she doesn’t need one

2. As with all Truss decisions, this was immediately tested by a thorough slap in the chops from the following bits of reality
3. Suella Braverman was formally reprimanded for mishandling sensitive documents

4. Then Kwasi Kwarteng’s celebratory champagne reception for hedge-fund managers who made billions from his shite budget “may have broken the ministerial code”, or what’s left of it after Johnson
Read 49 tweets
Oct 10
I don't despise Tory voters.

I don't blame people who do, but I don't.

I just think people who vote Tory are wrong. And it's about time they realised it. 🧵
The Tories said they were going to control the national debt.

It's gone up every year they've been in office.
The Tories said Brexit would make us richer.

It's made us far poorer.
Read 21 tweets
Oct 6
Drink heavily, buckle up, and let's get started with a visit to the Tory Party Conference, where the most dense things in the known universe are packed into one room, and we all pray it reaches critical mass and explodes.

Yet another #TheWeekInTory
1. Liz Truss – ITV4 made flesh – got dressed up as a fictional fascist to present her List Of People Who Disagreed With Me, and are therefore enemies

2. No news yet on whether the "enemies list " included Liz Truss from the previous day, who believed in different things
3. In her speech to the Insane Clown Posse, Truss said there was "no alternative" and "I am ready to make the hard choices"

4. Barely 24 hours earlier she'd switched to an alternative because the hard choices were too hard
Read 28 tweets
Oct 4
Thoughts about Truss 🧵

She wants to be seen as a radical, but doesn't have any radical ideas - merely destructive ones.

She wants to be seen as tough, but is just spectacularly brittle, blown about and shattered by every gust of political wind.
And she persuades herself she's a fresh thinker, but all she really does is listen to demonstrable facts, then mindlessly do whatever is the opposite and claim it's "being original".

It's childish contrarianism, masquerading as innovation, and fooling nobody.
And she has no hinterland. Only 50 MPs backed her in the 1st round of the leadership. 59% of members voted for her, but that's not a resounding majority, and it's evaporated now. No popular mandate. Cabinet discipline gone. Donors abandoning her. Markets lost all trust. Alone.
Read 7 tweets
Oct 3
#TheWeekInTory
1. Our new PM, Margarine Thatcher, said she was "absolutely committed" to cutting tax for the rich

2. Then she cancelled tax cuts the rich

3. Truss boasted she was prepared to make unpopular decisions

4. But her decisions were unpopular, so she cancelled them
5. Truss was asked “How many people voted for your plan”, and replied…

6.

7.

8. [ profound silence ]

9.

10.

11. … “What do you mean by that?”
12. Thatcher famously said “The lady’s not for turning”

13. Truss has done 8 U-turns since she began her leadership campaign

14. She rotates so often, she’d be more useful if you painted “MOT” on one side, “TEST” on the other, and stuck her on the pavement outside Kwik Fit
Read 32 tweets

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