Kakistocracy XLIII:The Blob.

Dominic Raab has resigned from his position as Justice Secretary and Deputy PM after an independent report found him guilty of the bullying he'd long been accused of. We don't know, at the moment, if he was given a quiet shove by Rishi Sunak or if he would have resigned anyway, as he'd promised he would do if found guilty. But does this mean that Sunak has come good on his promise to govern with accountability, professionalism, and integrity?

You can probably guess what I think about that and we'll come to it soon enough but first let's take a moment to 'celebrate' Raab's stellar career. From being co-author of Britannia Unchained along with Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, and, er, Chris Skidmore (what a line up! Britannia Unchained is really proving to be the Mein Kampf of the modern Conservative movement), to describing feminists as "among the most noxious bigots", and on to refusing to come home from holiday as Kabul fell to the Taliban because, in his own immortal words, "the sea was closed".

Raab's only serious achievement in office was to, in just two years, go from having a nearly 24,000 vote majority in Esher and Walton in 2017 to having a less than 3,000 vote one in 2019. He remains an MP as I type but it's not looking good for him at the next election. Nobody likes a bully and, right now, nobody very much likes a Tory. Being both we can probably safely say he's fucked.

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. But Sunak and his accountability, professionalism, and integrity? Not having it. Not when the likes of Suella Braverman remain in place as Home Secretary (obsessing over woke culture, snowflakes, golliwogs in Essex pubs, and wrongly asserting that most grooming gangs in the UK are of British-Pakistani origin) and not when Therese Coffey remains in place as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (her most recent contribution to the national debate:why don't we all eat turnips to make up for the tomatoes that are in short supply?) and not when Matt Hancock and Kwasi Kwarteng remain as Conservative MPs.

Kwarteng and Hancock were both recently caught in a sting by the brilliant Led by Donkeys. Both men told a made up South Korean firm that they would work for them, do them a few favours like putting them in touch with Boris Johnson - a "great guy" apparently, if the firm were to pay them each thousands of pounds per day.

That, to me, should mean the end of their political careers and, hopefully, the electorate of Spelthorne (Kwarteng) and West Suffolk (Hancock) will be of the same mind when the next general election finally comes round. That's if Hancock and Kwarteng have the gall to even stand as candidates. I can imagine them finding it much easier to line their nests in the corporate world.

The reason so many liars, chancers, and grifters are now at the heart of government can be put down to something I've seen described as "long Johnson". We know what Covid can do, how lethal it can be, but we're still unsure of the effects of long Covid. Equally, we know how dangerous Boris Johnson can be, and has been, but we're still unsure how deleterious long Johnson can be.

We're seeing the damage of the careless and idiotic Brexit he so enthusiastically backed (when he saw it could help in the rise of his career) and we're beginning to see the damage that was done when Johnson filled his cabinets with politicians of very little ability and very little integrity. He promoted those solely because they showed him loyalty and swore fealty to his egocentric, ill thought through, and destructive policies.

One of those was Rishi Sunak. Following the 2019 general election, Johnson made Sunak the Chancellor, you'll remember his big hits like 'furlough' and 'eat out to help out', and although Sunak is far more managerial than the calamity that was Liz Truss or the shitshow that was Boris Johnson (that's one of the reasons I've not written one of these Kakistocracy blogs since January) he is still very much part of their gang.

He can come across as 'tech bro' as he likes but he's still the guy who boasted to voters in Tunbridge Wells that he was taking money from underfunded areas to give to wealthy areas, he's still the guy that got a fine for patying during lockdown, and he's still the guy who told the people of Northern Ireland that they have a brilliant Brexit deal because they can still deal with the EU.

Yeah, like we all had before Brexit! Thanks a bunch, Rishi. Sunak may not be as 'funny' as Johnson or Truss but it should not be forgotten he enabled Johnson, he's been convicted of two crimes while in office, and he proudly boasts of not being a friend of the working class. Let's not forget he's keeping Suella Braverman in his cabinet while, at the same time, we celebrate the demise of Raab's career.

Braverman, who loves to call everyone who disagrees with her part of some huge amorphous 'blob' - no doubt in alliance with Liz Truss's "anti-growth coalition" and stuffed with "lefty lawyers" and members of "the metropolitan elite", has been promoting an unworkable, immoral, and almost certainly illegal small boats policy which aims to make criminals of and punish some of the world's most vulnerable people. As ever, the focus is on punishing the victims and not the criminal smugglers.

Gary Lineker, quite famously, said the language used was comparable to language used in Germany in the 1930s. Not an untrue claim but it saw him removed, for one night only, from Match of the Day. In an act of solidarity that would be incomprehensible to most Tories many of his colleagues (Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, Alex Scott, Jermaine Jenas) went out in support of him.

Lineker's back now and Match of the Day is all the better for it. But if Suella Braverman had really wanted to stop the small boats why didn't she just close the sea. She could have asked Dominic Raab for advice on doing so. But perhaps she was scared to because Dominic Raab has a reputation for being very unpleasant towards female colleagues.

Not a surprise he is part of a party who have a reputation for being very unpleasant towards the country they're supposed to be looking after and the people in that country. Dominic Raab's resignation is, of course, good news - but I won't be happy until every last one of them is voted out. They've been in for thirteen years now and nobody can name one single thing that has improved in the UK in that time. Let's make thirteen an unlucky number for the Tories. The blob must rise again.