Thread by @RussInCheshire

I don’t like it.
You don’t like it.
The Tories definitely don’t like it, cos the fuckers keep blocking me.
But it’s happening anyway.

Brace, brace, for #TheWeekInTory🧵

(and remember to click "show replies" if the thread cuts off)

1. Let’s start with David Cameron, the ex-PM who charmed us all with his polished manners, lacquered hair, and varnished face

2. The glazed polyp was back this week, to insist we should not criticise the Rwanda plan “unless you have a better idea”

3. I have: stop doing it. Attempting to ship just 37 people to Rwanda last year cost the same as 235 years of asylum allowances, and it was such an effective deterrent that illegal immigration rose by 24% in a year

4. Yes, after 13 years ignoring everything else so they could bring down immigration, immigration hit record levels, and everything else is going to shit

5. In November, froth-weight ninny Rishi Sunak said he’d bring immigration down below 2019 levels (220,000)

6. By Monday he’d adjusted expectations, promising to bring it below “the level he inherited” (500,000)

7. On Tuesday it reached 606,000

8. Sunak assured us he had “not lost control”, which presumably means ALL THIS is exactly what he wanted to happen

9. Iain Duncan Smith, a child’s drawing of sublime idiocy superimposed onto a competitively evil gonad, said the country was “addicted to cheap labour”, so we must pay Brits more to do the work

10. He opposes pay rises for nurses, doctors, teachers, or rail workers

11. So the govt pushed down wages by reducing by 20% the amount a migrant can earn

12. IDS then said if Tories don’t reduce migration “the public will mark us down” cos “we have been in power now for four years”

13. He can't count above 10 without taking his shoes off

14. During those 14 years (Iain), Tories stopped benefit if you have a 3rd child, and ended legal aid if you earn over £12k

15. Thatched hobo Boris Johnson earned £6m last year, is about to have his 8th child, but got £245k to fight an inquiry into things he's admitted he did

16. While preparing to defend the indefensible, Johnson’s taxpayer-funded lawyers found his diary, which allegedly listed all the times he’d had friends over at Chequers during the period when lockdowns made this illegal

17. So his own lawyers reported him to the Cabinet Office

18. And then the Cabinet Office reported him to the police

19. So Johnson sacked his lawyers and threatened to sue the Cabinet Office

20. But in order to sue, he’ll need new lawyers, who will – you guessed it – once again be funded by the taxpayer

21. An internal source says the newly exposed material shows “fairly clear evidence of criminality”

22. Johnson’s pals rushed to “help”. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a zombie Jarvis Cocker made entirely out of string cheese, admitted he’d visited Chequers with his family during lockdown.

23. Nadine Dorries – Johnson’s very own Greyfriars Bobby who has made it halfway to being an idiot savant – is reportedly threatening to stand down and cause a byelection because the Covid Inquiry is picking on her beloved Boris

24. And Johnson’s sister Rachel helpfully volunteered that “all the rules were followed whenever I went to Chequers”, and act which would have been against the rules

25. There follows a sub-thread of reaction quotes from impressed Tory MPs and peers:

a. “Are you determined to turn our party into a skip fire?”

b. “The whole [Johnson] family have a massive sense of entitlement”

c. “Would the last Tory MP to leave the building please turn off the lights.”

d. “He [Johnson] is like a bad smell that does not seem to go away”

26. Anyway: galoshes on, and let’s pay a visit to Suella Braverman, an irradiated beaver locked in a staring competition with the inevitability of failure

27. This week she was accused of asking civil servants to help her avoid a driving fine

28. She denied four times that this had happened

29. It had definitely happened, which means she broke the ministerial code by lying

30. The code also says ministers mustn’t ask civil servants to do anything other than official work – such as helping to avoid a speeding fine

31. The former top civil servant at the Brexit dept said “This is a breach of the ministerial code [and] a real lapse of judgment”

32. In the end, Braverman opened a window, tensed slightly, and squeezed out a hot, fresh apology to Rishi Sunak, Britain's first known spine donor

33. Sunak, a student of ethics who is being PM during his gap year, admitted there had been a “perception of impropriety”, which is against the ministerial code, and that’s why he’d decided Braverman hadn’t broken the ministerial code

34. Lego Elvis isn't the only one struggling with the basics: it emerged that Braverman “keeps getting facts wrong” and makes so many “basic errors” that her dept now has a dedicated team to fact check any statement she makes to the Cabinet

35. More on getting shit wrong: NSPCC wrote to Braverman and Sunak, telling them their “inaccurate or divisive claims” about grooming gangs are making children less safe

36. Fresh from this, Braverman announced new limits on foreign students, to “help boost Britain’s economy”

37. Foreign students add £36 billion a year to our economy, which you can think of as a pile of £10 notes over 223 miles high, which we’re about to set fire to in the middle of an economic crisis

38. More quotes for Tory MPs who are clearly admirers of Braverman:

a. “I don’t often say people are completely useless, but if her desk had not been occupied I wouldn’t have noticed”

b. “She is already a liability”

c. “You can’t use your official position to get privileged treatment”

d. “It is blindingly obvious she is not up to the job and her attitude, tone and lack of administrative ability are detrimental to the govt”

e. “She has never been up to the job. With each passing day more evidence emerges of her poor judgement”

f. “She should absolutely go”

g. “She is peddling inflated rhetoric and giving speeches that trash the Conservative brand”

39. So: literally the next day: fresh allegations of Braverman breaking the ministerial code, this time over undeclared links with the Rwandan authorities

40. The former head of Standards in Public Life said “I would have thought that could be a breach of the ministerial code”

41. But Braverman blames all her problems not on her bracing and seemingly bottomless clodhoppery, but on small boats

42. This is despite over 75% of small boats asylum claims from 2018 still awaiting her decision

43. And this week she tried to get out of voting for her own signature small boats bill, which makes it look like she doesn’t want to solve the problem, simply to exploit it

44. A Tory insider said “The chief whip is at his wit’s end with Suella”

45. Meanwhile, still stuck at his wit’s beginning, James Cleverly went on a 4 day tour of the Caribbean in a luxurious, taxpayer-funded private jet that costs £10,000 per hour

46. The jet is described by its leasing company as “the ultimate statement of wealth”

47. For those lacking such wealth: good news, inflation fell

48. Bad news: it’s still higher than forecast, so prices are still zooming up

49. Terrible news: food inflation hit a 45-year high

50 . Halving inflation is the third of Sunak’s Five Pledges to have failed in the last three weeks

51. He also dropped non-pledge pledges to improve animal welfare

52. And dropped the promise to improve air quality

53. And to maintain food standards

54. And the promise to build 40 hospitals by 2030, now pushed back another decade

55. As waiting lists spiral to over 7 million, and over 2.5 million are unable to work cos they're off sick, the number of people who died while waiting in A&E has risen 40% since 2019

56. So rather than building hospitals, improving pay and conditions, or allowing migrant health workers into the country, Sunak plans to cut migrant nurses, and “legally compel” GPs to offer patients private healthcare.

57. The guy who promised integrity at the highest level told this week's PMQs that the IMF predicts “stronger growth” in the UK than in Germany, France or Italy

58. The IMF actually predicts the UK will have the lowest growth in the G7 over the next 2 years

59. To help with growth, Sunak is at least determined to press ahead with his flagship “freeports” policy

60. A govt report found freeports are “of no economic benefit” to the country

61. I wonder who they will benefit? Let's pop to Teesside and find out!

62. Teesside Tory mayor Ben Houchen is accused of “industrial scale corruption” just cos he sold public land the size of Gibraltar and worth £100m to a freeport company for slightly less than 97 quid

63. Then taxpayers paid £246m to clean the land for the new owners

64. The deal allows the 2 new owners half the profits from any the scrap on the site

65. So they made £50m, before a single one of their promised new job has been created

66. And what’s more, nobody can find any evidence that they’ve invested in the project at all

67. Under pressure from MPs, Michael Gove, a bestial melding of Gordon the Gopher and JarJar Binks, told parliament he’d already set up an inquiry into this scandal

68. He hadn’t

69. So he said he’d do an inquiry, but not via the National Audit Office, which reports independently to parliament: he’ll set up a new investigative body instead, which will report only to him

70. And he’ll choose who is on the body. So that’s nice and independent, then

71. Other news: police requested a fifth bail extension for the Tory MP arrested for rape a year ago

72. In free-speech news, the govt banned a leading chemical weapons expert from a govt event because a few years ago he said “Bloody Tories” on Twitter

73. A major Tory donor is under investigation for tens of millions in money laundering

74. Jeremy Hunt was officially reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority for claiming state debt would fall, when in fact it would rise

75. And Damian Green did a one-man performance of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch, describing a blissful childhood of bathing in fresh human turds, so now he answers to Damian Yellowish-Brown

76. Before this idiocy ends, a few more quotes from delighted Tory MPs

a. “The latest election-winning slogan from the amazing Sunak PR machine seems to be ‘let them pick fruit and swim in shit’.”

b. “I feel like I’m in the wrong party”

c. “They need sacking”

77. No, I’m not done. Off to Brexit, the Tory Party’s raison d'etre: and it remains entirely on-brand, with only 9% of voters saying it’s been a success, and 62% saying it’s been a failure

78. Even amongst Leave voters, almost twice as many think it’s a failure than a success

79. UK fruit exports have dropped by 55% since Brexit

80. Brexit food trade barriers cost us £7bn

81. Brexit is responsible for a third of food price inflation

82. And the number of UK companies relocating operations to Germany to avoid Brexit paperwork rose 266% in a year

83. But it’s not all bad news: 10% of Tory MPs have already decided to stand down at the next election

84. This now includes Dominic Raab, who I’ve often mocked for his square head, but I won’t do that now. I’ll simply point out that his haircuts cost £8, which is £2 a side

If this is the kind of thing that appeals to your sick, sick mind, perhaps you'd like to order my forthcoming book, which has space for far more jokes, and is easy to set on fire and hurl from a barricade

unbound.com/books/four-cha…