I apologise, but try as I might, I can’t find any material for #TheWeekInTory.
Only kidding. It’s an absolute casserole. Let’s down a pint of absinth and get stuck in.
Also - trigger warning.
🧵
1. We begin with the Covid inquiry, which revealed the shocking news that everything we all knew three years ago ACTUALLY HAPPENED
2. This week it looked at the actions of Boris Johnson, a shit Aslan who we made into our Prime Minister for a laugh
3. Cabinet office records said Johnson was “weak and indecisive” and “cannot lead”
4. But Johnson’s defendants said Covid was merely “the wrong crisis … for his skill-set”, which is the skill-set of a children’s entertainer on mandatory leave pending the outcome of a tribunal
5. Then Dominic Cummings turned up, exhibiting the glassy-eyed stare of an unqualified accountant doorstepped by Watchdog
6. He’d spent the pandemic conducting iffy eye-tests and charming his team with supportive messages calling them “useless fuckpigs”, “morons” and “cunts”
7. Johnson believed Covid to be “a hoax” on the day over 4,000 died from it in Italy
8. Meanwhile Matt Hancock – Peewee Herman reflected in the back of a spoon – wanted the authority to decide “who lived and who died” in the event Covid WASN’T found to be entirely made up
9. Johnson said Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people”, and the elderly should “accept their fate”
10. Part of that fate was him being prepared to “recklessly” kill the Queen by exposing her to Covid, until he was talked out of a regicidal palace visit by staff
11. Johnson then asked Dominic Cummings to invent a “dead cat” story to get the pandemic off the front pages, because BoJo was “sick of it”
12. Cummings revealed that Johnson had given “direct bungs” to newspapers “dressed up as Covid relief”, in return for positive coverage
13. Number 10 officials said at the time, “Govt isn’t actually that hard but [Johnson] is really making it impossible”
14. They called the govt's response to the pandemic “a terrible, tragic joke”
15. But the thatched sex-yeti did make a fine contribution to science, with his mind-blowing and not-medically-proven theory that Covid could be treated by aiming your hairdryer up your nose
16. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the precise physical intersection of a harrowing antique dildo and the concept of gout, said Johnson was merely “an antidote to group think”
17. But Tory Lord Bethell said Johnson did “everything he could” to avoid focusing on the pandemic
18. This was, it is claimed, because Johnson didn’t want to take the limelight off his "Brexit triumph"
19. Brexit triumph update: Brexit has caused a 22% slump in UK exports to the EU, which was once our biggest market
20. And because Brexit saved the NHS, patients now face “severe drug shortages” due to delays and higher costs
21. In light of this, Rishi Sunak, a rejected early draft of an Aardman sidekick, said Britons “must be prepared to fail”, and we must applaud him leading by example
22. Sunak took a break from his gap-year pretending to be a Prime Minister to audition for his next job, as Elon Musk’s desktop bobble-head
23. Sky News described the Musk/Sunak softball interview as “One of the maddest events I’ve ever covered”
24. Sunak said the risk of extinction from AI was on the same scale as that from nuclear war
25. But good news for fans of The Terminator, because Sunak responded to this existential threat by letting Musk regulate AI all by himself
26. As Sunak smilingly told us AI would destroy our jobs, futures, and possibly lives, Musk immediately unveiled an AI product with what he called “a rebellious streak”, and I began digging a bunker
27. Tory MP’s responses:
28. “The PM is offering the electorate dystopia. Thick, thick, thick”
29. “I despair at No 10’s naivety”
30. “Head in hands. It’s utterly breathtaking. Unbelievable crassness.”
31. Speaking of witch (typo): Suella Braverman claimed rough sleeping is a “lifestyle choice”
32. Funny how that “lifestyle choice” became 175% more popular when the Tories introduced austerity
33. Chinchilla the Hun’s solution to people forced to live in tents is: ban tents
34. Ben Howlett called Braverman “actually evil”
35. She then went on to describe people asking for a ceasefire as “hate marches”
36. She says she opposes asking everybody to stop killing one another, because it ruins the meaning of Armistice Day
37. It didn’t seem to matter that the police have already said no such march is even happening
38. Braverman’s previous great success, the Bibby Stockholm Legionnaires Disease Breeding Facility, failed fire inspections again
39. So the govt now has to reduce the number of people it can hold, making the entire cost-saving exercise 17% more expensive than the thing it replaces
40. And the Home Office is being investigated for unlawfully segregating asylum seekers by nationality or race
41. Esther McVey, one of the brightest stars in the political fundament, accused Just Stop Oil of vandalising a 1651 painting that she somehow thinks depicts the Suffragette movement
42. Fun fact: the "Suffragette" painting she's defending was vandalised by Suffragettes in 1914
43. Former Tory chair Brandon Lewis has taken a six-figure job at a company owned by sanctioned Russians
44. Another former Tory chair, Bim Afolami, is being investigated over payments from a lobbying firm
45. And yet another former Tory chair, Jake Berry, accused an unnamed (but we all know) Tory MP of being a serial rapist
46. Being Tory chair sounds like a relentless, high-stakes game of gobshite whack-a-mole
47. Tangoed Morph stunt double (and, yep, former Tory chair) Oliver Dowden said there was no cover-up of the rape allegations, even though the party had known about it for ages, but hasn’t taken action against the alleged culprit
48. But Dowden couldn’t deny the Tory party had quietly paid for the alleged victim to get treatment
49. Michelle Mone finally admitted involvement in a £200m rip-off PPE company, after denying it for 3 years, when she wasn’t too busy buying private jets with her profits
50. The Tory chair of the Environment Select Committee has been asked to resign, after it was found he was a member of a group opposed to solar power, but in favour of bee-killing, trophy hunting, culling badgers, and fox hunting
51. Bob Stewart was found guilty of racial abuse
52. Crispin Blunt was arrested for rape and drug offences
53. Peter Bone was kicked out of the party for waving his tallywacker at a member of staff
54. Gillian Keegan denied Tories have a “cultural issue” with sexual misconduct. So here's a list to help Gillian:
a. Imran Ahmad Khan: sexual assault
b. Charlie Elphicke: sexual assault
c. Michael Fallon: resigned after groping incident
d. Rob Roberts: sexually harassed a junior member of staff
e. Chris Pincher: accused of groping multiple times
f. Neil Parish: watching porn in parliament
g. Julian Knight: still under investigation for sexual assault
h. Mark Menzies: paid a male escort for sex, showed him round parliament, and then asked him to procure crystal meth
i. Stephen Crabb: texted a 19-year-old he’d just interviewed for a job, and asked her to meet him for sex
j. Mark Garnier: referred to his secretary as “sugar tits” and made her buy sex toys for him
k. Brooks Newmark: sent sexually explicit messages to an undercover reporter investigating his habit of sending sexually explicit messages to people
l. Damian Green: resigned after being accused of groping a Tory activist half his age
m. Andrew Griffiths: found to have repeatedly raped and abused his wife, and sent over 2000 sexually explicit messages to other women
n. David Warburton: promised “not to remove my clothes again”, if the woman he had just groped would let him back inside for more cocaine
o. Unnamed Tory MP: woke up drunk in a brothel, didn’t know how he got there, and had lost his clothes
p. Unnamed Tory MP: told his secretary to “come and feel the length of my cock”
q. Unnamed Tory MP: groped a female journalist and said “God, I love those tits”
r. Boris Johnson: accused of groping 2 women during a single lunch
t. Andrew Rosindell: as part of a “gentleman’s agreement”, has not attended parliament for a year while facing indecent assault investigation
u. He must have a different definition of “gentleman” than I do
s. And then there’s the spreadsheet of 36 sexually untrustworthy Tory MPs that is handed to new staff, as a sort of field guide to the degenerates and dangerous monsters they’ll be working for
55. Anyway: back to the smorgasbord of odium and despair that’s still, incredibly, running this country
56. Kemi Badenoch announced a “£1.4 trillion trade deal” with Florida, which isn’t a trade deal, and would only be worth £1.4 trillion if Florida gave us their entire GDP
57. And now a guest appearance by former Tory MP and exuberantly gormless flapdoodle Nadine Dorries, who claimed social media firms have a “big dial” that they turn to make everybody more left wing
58. She went on to assert Boris Johnson was taken down by “shadowy forces” which she has imaginatively nicknamed “Moneypenny”, “Skyfall” and “M”, but it’s possible she just fell asleep face down on her keyboard during a James-Bond-and-Lambrini marathon.
59. This culminated in her claim that No 10 has a “shadowy fixer” employed to kill people’s pet rabbits
60. Meanwhile, away from this turd-bestrewn right-wing playpen, the UN described the UK as “in violation of international law” over our levels of poverty
61. The independent Institute for Government described Tory policies as a “doom loop” that had left vital services “crumbling”
62. And the Tory solution to the sewage pollution crises was revealed to be: changing the definition of “pollution”
63. In the face of catastrophic and irreversible climate disaster, Sunak announced new North Sea oil and gas licenses to “bring bills down”
64. Energy secretary Clare Coutinho admitted they “won’t bring bills down”
65. And finally, the Tories revealed marvellous new plans to brand anybody “undermining” the UK as an “extremist”. So if this is my last tweet, it's because I'm paying a long, involuntary visit to a black-ops site in Mogadishu.
Sorry, but my publisher likes it when people buy my books, and I like it when my publisher sends me £47.21 every three months.
So if you can help to keep a fat author fed for up to 12 hours, I can promise you some laughs.
This isn't about selling books, but it's genuinely distressing to see our leading broadcast journalists throw their hands in the air in shock at the COVID evidence.
I reported all of it (bar a couple of WhatsApps) as it was happening in 2020/2021.
It's *shocking* that ...
... right now you can buy my book (please don't) and read absolutely all of this - and it was published over a year ago. And I'm not even a journalist.
Yet here's Robert Peston and Nick Robinson, declaring their surprise. These people are paid huge sums to inform the public ...
... about vital (in fact, genuinely life-or-death) political events AS THEY HAPPEN. Not three years later.
How the spangly tartan fuck are we supposed to make informed decisions at an election, if this is the standard of reporting by BBC and ITN?
1. Britain faces a crisis in health, education, farming, energy, housing, childcare, social care, imports, exports, manufacturing, services, debt, growth and infrastructure, so Rishi Sunak announced his grand plan to slightly alter A-Levels
2. As Sunak finished his first and last year in office, there were rave reviews from his Tory colleagues:
3. “He’s increasingly weak”
4. “He exists in torpor”
5. “Clearly Rishi Sunak isn’t working as leader of our party”
6. Even the Speaker had to bollock Sunak, who has begun a discombobulating habit of asking HIMSELF questions during PMQs, and then bouncing on the spot as he answers, looking for all the world like his puppeteer is having an argument in Italian
If you need any more reasons to protect the #NHS75, here's what happened to me.
I was 40, a non-smoker, fairly fit, no sign of illness. And then one day I collapsed at work, was rushed to hospital with blue-lights going, and spent 3 years recovering from cancer.
(Warning, this thread describes hospital treatments, and some photos of post-surgical stuff. It's not horrific, but some of you are shrinking violets)
It was May 2010. The previous Saturday I'd climbed Helvelyn, and on the Sunday I played rugby.
On 3 May I was working at home, and around 10am I went for a wee. A quite startling amount of blood poured out of me. I guess any amount is a bit of a shock, but this was a LOT.
It's hard to overstate the damage Boris Johnson did. Not just by his policies, but by his normalisation of lies.
As the guy in Chernobyl says "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid"
What we're seeing now is the debt being called in.
Lies about Brexit are causing omni-directional havoc
Lies about No10 parties infected the Tories.
Lies about immigration, lies about Russian influence, about social care, about Covid, about PPE, NHS, policing, housing, tax, and the function and authority of international law.
Almost every crisis the Tories are dealing with today originates in a lie Boris Johnson told.
The thing is: most Tory MPs knew they were lies, even when he first spoke them. They just let themselves go along with it. They cheered him on, cos briefly, the lie felt good to them.