Thread by @RussInCheshire

Last week I was away, so this is technically slightly more than #TheWeekInTory. That’s my way of apologising for it being fucking massive.

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It's Friday. My advice: it's best to do this drunk.

Here we go...🧵

1. Let’s start with PartyGate, and joyless claymation ethics droid Rishi Sunak decided to sue his own inquiry for having the temerity to ask to see the things he always said it could see

2. He said he wouldn’t hand over WhatsApp messages that are “unambiguously irrelevant”

3. The Inquiry said only they could just what’s relevant

4. The govt said they’d already judged, and the Inquiry could trust them, honestly

5. The Inquiry “said no way, dude, hand them over”

6. So the govt said, “what messages? We haven’t even seen them, guv”

7. So the Inquiry showed Schrodinger’s Twat Rishi Sunak the bit in their terms where he’d said they had to right to see everything

8. So the govt asked for a Judicial Review

9. It is 2 months since the govt said it wanted to abolish Judicial Reviews

10. The Lord Chief Justice said the govt couldn’t possibly win the case

11. So Sunak decided to go ahead regardless, at a cost of at least £100,000

12. Then, essentially just to annoy Sunak, Boris Johnson said the Inquiry could have all his WhatsApp messages anyway

13. But it turns out these are only the messages sent AFTER all his shit decisions had been made

14. He said the rest were on a phone that’s too much of a security risk to switch on

15. GCHQ called bullshit, and said there is no risk whatsoever in turning the old phone on

16. This week: reports of yet more illegal parties, this time at Chequers

17. You need a heart of stone not to laugh your tits off when you discover this only emerged because Johnson wrote it all down in his diaries

18. And his own legal team saw it, and reported it

19. So Johnson sacked his legal team, who had already cost the taxpayer £225,000

20. And now he needs a new legal team, at a new cost of £1 million

21. If you or I earn more than £12,475, we can’t get legal aid

22. Fat Malfoy earned £6m this year

23. It was also revealed he’d lost us at least £10bn by chaotically scrawling a vital Australian trade deal on a scrap of paper in the toilet

24. The deal prevents us from selling beef to Oz

25. But Oz can sell beef to us

26. Australian said he had “given away the kingdom”

27. Johnson demanded London’s Labour mayor “commits to keeping Uxbridge Police Station open”

28. Uxbridge is one of 60 stations the Boris Johnson announced the closure of, back when was merely Witless Dickington, the pussy-bothering Mayor of London

29. Democracy news, and the govt lost a parliamentary vote on their iffy Public Order Bill

30. So for the first time in our entire national history, they simply ignored parliament, and inserted the overturned law into another bill, bypassing democracy entirely. Kewl. Kewl.

31. The 40 hospitals we were promised would open in 2030 won't start to be built until 2033

32. And there'll only be 6 of them

33. Steve Barclay, an explosion in a nothing factory, said work had begun on improvements to 2 London hospitals

34. The hospitals said they were unaware of any work. Or of Steve Barclay, the nonentity's nonentity.

35. Barclay also indefinitely delayed his plan for increasing the NHS workforce due to “various things that have been happening in recent years”

36. For example, his own govt

37. After 5 years, research shows the 2-child cap on benefits has not reduced birth-rates or pushed people into employment

38. But it has pushed over 1.5 million kids into poverty

39. And this week research showed Universal Credit pushed an additional 600,000 kids into poverty

40. Top over-achiever Suella Braverman, aka Chinchilla the Hun, doubled her disapproval rating in a single week after attempting to avoid the consequences of speeding

41. Three other Tory MPs from her dept were also found to have illicitly claimed driving fines on expenses

42. She announced a new policy to deter foreign students

43. Foreign students add £41.9bn a year to the economy

44. Universities warned their funding model is “broken” and will collapse entirely if we lose another £41.9bn just to be horrid to foreigners

45. Braverman promised immigration below 200,000

46. It exceeded 600,000

47. So Robert Jenrick said counting immigrants was now “not particularly helpful”

48. But Sunak continued counting anyway, and said his small boats plan was starting to work, cos crossings are down 20%

49. But all crossings in the whole of Europe are down 30% due to bad weather, so we’re actually 10% up

50. Suella Braverman told MPs the asylum backlog is down 10,000

51. The asylum backlog is actually up 17,000

52. She refused to correct her statement to MPs

53. When in 2019 the govt refused permanent right to remain for 141,000 EU nationals living long-term in the UK, the Tories promised they wouldn’t ever be charged for using the NHS

54. This week, bills were sent out charging them for using the NHS

55. Over 53% of UK now wants a closer relationship with the EU

56. Only 14% want more Brexit

57. Sunak said he wanted to reduce immigration, and not give a pay rise to teachers

58. Same week, he announced a policy of wooing foreign teachers to move here for a £10k pay rise

59. Sunak supported an anti-trans speech, saying “We mustn’t allow a small but vocal few to shut down discussion”

60. It is 2 weeks since his govt blacklisted a high-ranking weapons expert from giving important military advice because he’d once tweeted “bloody Tories”

61. Matt Hancock, aka The Dim Reaper, a quasi-sentient teaspoon who accidentally became health minister, was forced to apologise for breaking lobbying rules

62. And Bob Stewart was charged with racially aggravated abuse

63. The govt’s sewage taskforce has only met once in a year

64. And the housing taskforce hasn’t met AT ALL for over a year

65. This may be related to warnings from housebuilders – 20% of Tory donations – that they don’t want the housing market to be fixed at all, thanks

66. At the current rate it will take 4700 years to build enough windfarms

67. So the govt reiterated its ban on large-scale onshore windfarms

68. Then Sunak took a £38k helicopter trip for a 64 mile journey that would have cost £30 on the train

69. On World Environment Day

70. Then he took a helicopter on a 2 mile journey to visit a man who had donated £50k to the Tories

71. Off to Washington, where Sunak confirmed there are still no plans to even discuss the trade deal he’d absolutely guaranteed us we’d have when he was campaigning for Brexit

72. Instead, Sunak announced an infinitely meaningless “Atlantic Declaration”, a one-directional love-in with USA, which was so important that Biden couldn’t even be bothered to stay for the announcement

73. US economist Larry Summers said Brexit was a “historic economic error”

74. He's right: UK factories blamed Brexit for their 16th consecutive month of falling exports

75. In March the govt cut social care funding by £500m

76. So this week the govt asked for an “army” of volunteers to do social care instead, for free, doing 170,000 hours per week

77. Tech-bro Sunak announced he wants the UK, which has no large-scale AI businesses, to become the global centre of oversight for AI legislation

78. He seemingly didn’t notice the USA and EU already signed an agreement about that in January

79. Nadine Dorries, a beef-witted, one-woman riot of idiocy, went on TV to say “the last thing I would want to do would be to cause a byelection in my constituency”

80. Four hours later, she resigned with immediate effect, causing a byelection in her constituency

81. This is because she hoped to become a peer as part of Horny Honey Monster Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list

82. Except she wasn’t on the list, cos Sunak blocked it, so she had a strop

83. And Johnson didn’t resign, he was pushed out

84. Also, he has no honour

85. He also gave a knighthood to Jacob Rees-Mogg, the harrowing result of a Dalek having a bout of hate-sex with a pendulum

86. JRM tweeted “Brexit allows us to lower food prices”

87. UK food inflation is at 19%, the highest level since 1977, and the highest in Western Europe

88. And a damehood for proven bully Priti Patel, the larval form of Miss Trunchbull

89. Major news organisations are boycotting the Tory Conference because the Tories have started charging £137 per journalist, just to APPLY to cover it. And the application might be refused.

90. Equality news, and the North East has slid further into poverty since the Levelling Up agenda was announced

91. But the govt did give £150k Levelling Up grant to a Russian Tory donor who is Putin’s former economic minister, and is worth at least £366m

92. And another donor, Crispin Odey, was alleged to have sexually harassed 13 women

93. And another is involved in a multimillion dollar money laundering investigation

94. The Nat Inst of Economic Research said Jeremy Hunt’s policies were “engineering a recession”

95. The IMF said we’d have the deepest recession in the G20 later this year

96. The OECD predicts we’ll have the highest inflation

97. And 800 mortgage products were pulled, almost as many as under the drive-by premiership of gawping, blank-eyed calamity-magnet Liz Truss

98. So, feeling our pain, the Tories launched a campaign against inheritance tax (which only affects the richest 4%), led by furious gonad Nadhim Zahawi, who was recently sacked for not revealing he’d had to pay over £3m in fines cos he hadn’t declared income

100. And unexpected people's champion Prince Harry said the govt is at “rock bottom”. Tune in next week to see if he’s right

Great news! Now you can re-live the nightmare in glorious stereo – The Decade In Tory is out in audiobook on 29 this month.

amzn.eu/d/1kjTW9t

And order my forthcoming sequel, if you dare.

I don't love all the promo stuff at the end of the thread, but this is how authors make a living. And my dog insists on being fed. Sorry.

It's funny. And if not, you can just hurl it off a barricade.

unbound.com/books/four-cha…