"We inherited a bunch of formulas from Labour that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas and that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that" - Rishi Sunak, speaking in Tunbridge Wells, August 2022.
It's been a whole week since I last wrote one of these Kakistocracy blogs - and, of course, it's been another week of Tory chaos, back-stabbing, and blood-letting. All of it done in the name of either the Tory party or naked personal ambition. None of it done with any attempt to ease the multiple, and growing, very serious problems the country is facing.
The end result is that the UK has ended up with its first ever Prime Minister 'of colour', its first Indian PM, and its first Hindu PM. That, in itself, is something to celebrate. The UK has long been a multi-cultural, multi-faith (and no faith) country and that should be reflected across society.
Sadly, however, I am unable to feel much joy about Sunak's appointment. When Barack Obama became the US's first black president and when Nelson Mandela took over as the leader of South Africa, people across the world witnessed scenes of unbridled joy and celebration at the overturning of centuries of oppression and racism.
Even if it didn't quite pan out like that in the end. In the UK, after twelve long years of Tory misery, there was no sense of celebration. For most the news was met with a weary shrug as the Conservative Party inflicted their fifth consecutive leader on us. Each one, it seems, forced on us with an ever smaller democratic mandate.
While Sunak may not be as egregious as his predecessors Liz Truss (remember her?) and Boris Johnson, it should not be forgotten that he is considered by the party to be to the right of both Truss and Johnson, that he was a committed Brexit supporter (Truss voted remain and Johnson hedged his bets until he could work out which option benefited him personally), and that, despite having a personal fortune of over £730,000,000, he is a firm believer in austerity.
It should not be forgotten either that he was fined for his role in partygate and that, until it became completely untenable not to do so, he supported and enabled Boris Johnson's reign of terror almost until the bitter of end. At least until he stabbed him in the back. It's a small mercy for the country that Johnson was unable to get the support to get him back into Number Ten (even though he, of course, lied that he did - he knows loads of MPs that support him but you wouldn't have heard of them, they go to a different Houses of Parliament) but Sunak may prove to be an equally slippery bastard.
As it stands, Keir Starmer will have a tougher job beating Sunak in a General Election than he would have done with Liz Truss (who he would have obliterated, even annihilated). That's not because Sunak is an honest or decent man but because he will, if his party fall in behind him - which is never a dead cert, be able to look competent as he pursues policies designed to enrich the wealthy and punish the poor.
When Liz Truss took over, I talked about the same old shit band playing the same old shit songs but just with a different singer. We're there again. Except, unlike Truss, this one can sing a bit. But it doesn't change the fact that this Tory karaoke has now been reduced to endless run throughs of turgid shit like Sex On Fire and Mr Brightside. They've run out of tunes so they're playing their greatest hits and, as we all know, their greatest hits suck arse.
One of the few plus points of Sunak's appointment, other than the fact it is almost certainly annoying Johnson (a man who managed to have three holidays instead of doing anything for his constituents in Hillingdon), is that it's made Nigel Farage look like a total prick. That's not difficult. Nigel Farage IS a total prick so it's hardly surprising that he should look like one but when he emerged from his lair to claim that the Tory leadership race would be a stitch up and that some kind of 'deep state' would ensure a 'remainer' take over he couldn't have been more wrong.
All three contenders, Sunak, Johnson, and Penny Mordaunt, were Brexit voters so there was never any chance of a remainer becoming leader. Despite the overwhelming evidence in front of us now that Brexit was a complete and utter failure and has caused, and will continue to cause, untold damage to the country. At the time of the Brexit vote, the UK economy was equal to 90% of the German economy. It now stands at 70% and that's just the financial angle. What it's done to division in the country and how it has hollowed out viable political alternatives is far more concerning in the long term.
Look at the people we have at the top of government now. Hiding behind the leadership chaos, we've seen the actual Health Secreteary Therese Coffey make claims that she's illegally, and potentially dangerously, shared her prescription drugs with others. Like one of her predecessors, Matt Hancock - you'll remember him, she's completely undermined a vital health message.
We've seen Suella Braverman, or Cruella - the woman who gets moist at the thought of asylum seekers being forcibly flown to Rwanda, then the actual Home Secretary blaming the disruption in the country on, wait for it - you know it's coming, "the Labour Party, the Lib-Dems, the Coalition of Chaos, the Guardian reading, tofu-eating wokerati, and the anti-Growth Coalition".
Before, the very next day, resigning. Or being sacked. With these cunts, it's never clear. We've seen Christoper Chope, a known Tory extremist previously most famous for blocking legislation on upskirting, appear on Newsnight to call his own colleagues a "disgrace", to call them "hyenas", and say he's "ashamed" of them. So the party's stopped the infighting then!
Most importantly of all, before u-turn queen Truss's ignoble resignation - the day after saying she's a fighter and not a quitter, we've seen Jeremy Hunt become the Chancellor and take over one of the most important jobs in the country despite, as The Guardian's Aditya Chakraborty points out, having a 'mandate' of just eighteen votes, coming last in the summer's leadership election, and attracting the support of just 0.00003% of all of the UK's voters.
Truss's brief reign - at fifty-five days the shortest ever and considerably shorter than her campaign to become leader - has left the UK even more of an international basket case, and laughing stock, than even Boris Johnson managed. As crisis upon crisis piles up on the UK, the Tories have no answer but to rearrange the deckchairs on their Titanic of a party.
A Titanic that was launched with a bottle of Brexit champagne smashed against its side as Boris Johnson put on a captain's hat and uniform and sailed the UK out into uncharted waters and dispensed with the lifeboats before realising he had no idea where he was going. Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were happy to join Johnson's crew on this demented voyage so I feel no sympathy for Truss and I wish for Sunak nothing but misery and a short time as PM.
These are ideologues without ideology and populists without popularity. Worst of all, they are humans without humanity. The debate now has gone beyond heating or eating towards safeguarding and suicide watches as so many of the general public have everything taken from them and given to the very rich. The Tories must go - and they must never return.
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