‘Delusional’, according to some of his colleagues

 

Firstly, my confessions: due to my enforced absence (dratted health!) in the first half of this week I was utterly if not exactly blissfully unaware of the monumental political event of two ministers resigning practically synonymously. Furthermore, stepping back into the fray this morning, scanning the front pages of the dead-tree editions at the usual place (link), I felt singularly detached from this political spectacle. Just as one shrugs and walks past a scuffle, saying ‘boys will be boys’, this theatre makes me say ‘politicians will be politicians’: in it for themselves, not for us.

This feeling of ‘them up there’ doing what they want, safely inside their cushy Westminster bubble, is reinforced by the acres, nay: hectares of scribblings by reporters and opinion piece writers in the Westminster MSM. The TV and radio ‘news’ shows must be even worse, but for a long time I’ve shunned watching the babbling and waffling of those ‘presenters’ who believe they are political geniuses, knowing better than anyone how everything ought to be and believing they have the right to tell us what and how to think.

This morning the broadsheets have decided to make this disagreeable spectacle into a ‘human-interest story’, with headlines such as :

“Mortally wounded Boris Johnson defies Cabinet demands to quit – Prime Minister sacks ‘treacherous’ Michael Gove and insists he will fight on in face of overwhelming mutiny” (paywalled link); “‘People were in tears’: how Johnson’s day of drama unfolded – Retreating to his bunker, the prime minister dug in and dug in some more. It was too much for many in the shellshocked Conservative Party” (link, paywalled)

And so, Gove is sacked by phone for being ‘treacherous’ – as if that wasn’t known not just in Westminster but out here in plebs country, for years! One wonders if Gove was kept ‘inside the tent to p*ss out rather than outside to p*ss in’, in the immortal words of a former US President. For the record, the DM has compiled a list of all those ‘Tory Ministers’ who resigned in the wake of the Javid-Sunak resignation (link), some doing so on the same day, some yesterday. 

Turns out these ‘ministers’ are mostly those ‘Private Parliamentary Secretaries’, those PPS of whom nobody has heard, of whom it is unknown what they actually do. These are the same MPs, or PPS, who were still clinging to their jobs – jobs they received through BJ’s patronage – who voted to keep BJ in office at the 1922 Committee ‘Confidence’ vote a month ago. They’re not so much rats leaving the sinking ship but frightened nonentities desperately trying to keep some shreds of political dignity.

Of course, it could well be that they clung on to their positions – nice little extra earners, these – despite knowing full well that the PM doesn’t mind trashing the country so he could cling on to his job. I will be generous and accord some of them a desire to do good for the country and to keep the PM as being less damaging than toppling him. This would sadly demonstrate their political ignorance because even a month ago it was plain to see that the current PM was a wrecking ball, that he’d not win another GE, as the by-elections have shown.

Meanwhile, the 1922 Committee has elected new members to their governing board and is expected to scrap the rule that a no-confidence vote can only be held again after 12 months. Thus, we can expect a new no-confidence vote, perhaps as early as next week, if BJ doesn’t leave voluntarily. Only about 40 MPs are now said to stand with the PM, not least because more of them are suddenly ‘furious’ since Johnson allegedly blamed MPs for not having stopped that ‘sex-pest’ MP from getting drunk and groping (link, paywalled). You really couldn’t make it up!

And so the gossip machinery, ahem: the “sources” everywhere, are having a field day. We learn that only Ms Dorries and Mr Rees-Mogg are ‘standing with the PM’. We learn from ‘a well-placed source’ that a certain Theresa May MP could be made interim PM (link). We read that:

“Nadhim Zahawi has been secretly working with close allies of Sir Lynton Crosby on a Tory leadership campaign for months, […] Zahawi has been preparing behind the scenes a Crosby-approved plan to become prime minister, which includes cutting corporation tax and VAT and looking at stamp duty. He is understood to be ready to activate the campaign immediately, and the team had been preparing a resignation letter centred on trust had he not been made chancellor.” (link, paywalled)

Crikey. One wonders if his preparations weren’t so secret after all and that’s why he was given Sunak’s job. According to the DT, the current Attorney General, Ms Braverman, has declared that she’d be running for the leadership (paywalled link) – oh dear. I wonder how many other cabinet members have also been preparing in secret for their campaign. What does it tell you about these Ministers and MPs, that they have been and are preparing for this contest even though the ‘Big Dog’ whose fur coat they’re trying to grasp for themselves is still there!

He is meanwhile telling them that they can only get rid of him if they’re prepared to get blood on their hands, warning of a GE which would lead to the truly to be dreaded ascent of Starmer to No 10, supported by the SNP. According to The Times, BJ even didn’t rule out to call a snap election, having been ‘bullish to the point of delusion’ and aiming a quip at his MPs: “I’m the leader that won you f***ers your elections.” (link, paywalled).

Delusional is correct: we gave him our votes not because we adored him but because we wanted Brexit done. Now we plebs can tell him that he squandered it all, on wallpapers, green crappery, Party Gate, posturing with that Ukrainian PM, giving away our weapons, squeezing the last penny from our wallets and generally acting like a modern-day Louis XIV.

When I look at the devastation threatening our country, from inflation to energy and food shortages, never mind that war in central Europe or the situation in those wonderful EU member states, from farmers’ protests in the Netherlands to plans for energy rationing and ‘moar covid’ in Germany, I cannot see that any of the current politicians, be they Labour, be they Tory ‘leadership candidates’, are intellectually equipped to address those problems. 

The two ‘front runners’ in the Tory Party popularity contest have been ominously silent at the time of writing: Ben Wallace and Miz Truss. As always, there’s also a dark horse who has kept herself out of the MSM and who might be in with a chance: Ms Penny Mordaunt. 

Looking at this unedifying spectacle, it’s obvious that we peasants, as always being made to pay for this, will be left with nothing. BJ meanwhile will at least have lots of nice photos from all the photo-ops he attended instead of working for our country. Perhaps this time we’ll learn not to put our trust in ‘Princes’ … and certainly not in other ‘Big Dogs’ and similar political animals.



 

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