Kakistocracy XLII:Bonfire Of The Sanities.

It's three years today since we unshackled ourselves from the EU and became 'free'. By now we should be enjoying those oft promised sunlit uplands and the NHS should be thriving on the extra £350,000,000 a week that the Brexit brigade promised on the side of their battle bus. How's that working out in reality? 

It rather seems that Project Fear turned out to be Project Reality. For all the Tory party's attempts to blame everything on either Covid or Putin's war in Ukraine, the harsh reality is that the UK is the only G7 country whose economy has not recovered to its pre-pandemic size, food and heating prices have seen such drastic rises people are worried about starving and freezing to death, and essential workers like nurses and firefighters are striking as never before.

The Brexit purists, of course, say this is simply because we haven't gone far enough. But nothing ever will be far enough for the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Daniel Hannan, and Nigel Farage. Men who have long ago proved themselves to be charlatans, chancers, and liars and men we should no longer take seriously. They are men we should never have taken seriously. Then we might not be in this mess.

Rees-Mogg has announced a plan to rip up all EU laws that have passed into British law regardless or not as to whether they are good or bad laws. He says it'll take a year to get rid of over 4,000 laws. This can only be a disaster, a bonfire of the sanities, and the only reason he's doing it is to prove Brexit purity to the headbangers on the extreme right of his own party.

Which, to be fair, following the Johnsonian purges of any decent and honest Tory (yes, such a thing did once exist though I still fundamentally disagreed with them) is nearly the entire party now. Let's take Suella Braverman, remarkably still the Home Secretary, as an example. Braverman has recently been confronted by 83 year old holocaust survivor Joan Salter who told her that the language she has used to demean and dehumanise refugees reminded her of the language the Nazis used to justify murdering Jews like Salter herself.

Braverman, you won't be surprised, refused to apologise. She couldn't see anything wrong with talking like a Nazi. Her only defence was "we have a problem with people exploiting our generosity, breaking our laws and undermining our system". On that point, she's not entirely incorrect. Let's have a look at some of the people who have broken the law, exploited our generosity, and undermined our system lately. We can start with Nadhim Zahawi.

Until earlier this week, Zahawi was the Chairman of the Conservative Party and was happily threatening to sue people who claimed he'd been guilty of tax evasion. Those threats to sue went quiet when it was revealed that he had, very much,  been guilty of tax evasion. Zahawi, of course, claimed it was a mistake and nothing criminal or suspicious.

He claimed to not be very good at money so it's easy to understand how a piffling little sum of £5,000,000 (admittedly a smallish percentage of his fortune) could slip under the radar. But claiming to be no good at money is an odd thing for someone who was Chancellor just last year to say and threatening to sue people who bring this up despite having already been investigated by HMRC is a downright deceitful thing to do.

In that he fits in very well with a Conservative Party that is as dishonest as it is criminal. He may have been removed as Chairman of the Tories but the electorate of Stratford-upon-Avon still have him as their MP. At least they'll be pleased to know his horses are nice and warm.

When Rishi Sunak took over from the disaster formerly known as Liz Truss last year he promised a return to integrity, professionalism, and accountability. With the behaviour of Zahawi, Braverman, and Rees-Mogg - and ongoing shitstorms concering Dominic Raab and Boris Johnson coming down the line - we can now see he has failed, miserably on all three accounts.

Yes, sacking Zahawi was the right thing but, as ever with the Tories, cleaning up their own house is not a serious concern. The important thing is to constantly create new enemies so we have someone else to blame for the mess the country is in. Instead of blaming the party that has been in power for nearly thirteen years now and has served up five truly dreadful PMs.

Protestors are always good scapegoats. They inconvenience people. They have to. That's the nature of protest. Try signing a petition and see where that gets you. So the government have come up with a plan to make almost every form of protest, including making noise and walking slowly, illegal. I had a bad flare up of gout last week. I was walking very very slowly. I wonder if, in the future, I could be arrested for that?

The Tories are bold though and they're not just taking on Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, and Greenpeace. No, they're even gunning for the nurses that they had us all standing on our doorsteps applauding during the first lockdown. A plan has been mooted to sack striking nurses which is, of course, complete and utter insanity.

We need more, not less, nurses and the way to get them is to pay them better and treat them with respect. At least pay them enough that they don't have to use food banks. There are 177 billionaires living in the UK at the moment (Rishi Sunak is just under that mark but he's fucking minted). Between them they own four times as much as money as the NHS is given each year.

Tax them more. At least make them pay the taxes they already should be paying. There's lots of talk about a 'cost of living' crisis but I don't think that tells the whole story. There's no cost of living crisis for Rishi Sunak, Nadhim Zahawi, or Jacob Rees-Mogg. The cost of living crisis is for the little people. The ones that abide by the law, pay their taxes, and try to do right by their fellow man.

What underpins the cost of living crisis is a far more serious crisis. It's a distribution of wealth crisis which means that old Etonians, Bullingdon bully boys, and tech bros like Sunak siphon huge percentages of the country's wealth into their own, often offshore, bank accounts and the rest of us squabble around for small change. It's the very definition of a drip down economy. Except there's not much dripping down.

In the long term, the whole system needs changing but in the short term the most urgent goal is to rid the country of this cruel, corrupted, and criminal Tory administration. One now so saturated in sleaze that even once proud Tory voter Rod Stewart can see it. Pausing only for a quick singalong of Maggie May, Rod the Mod rang Sky News to give his opinions of how the Tories are handling the NHS. It went something like this:-

"There are people dying because they cannot get scans. I personally have been a Tory for a long time but I think this government should stand now down and give the Labour party a go at it. In all my time living in this country, I’ve never seen it so bad. This is a bad time for us in Great Britain. Change the bloody government".

On The Last Leg, last Friday Adam Hills invited viewers to send in modified Rod Stewart songs that could reflect the current state of the Conservative government. There was a suggestion of The NHS Cuts Are The Deepest but nearly everyone else who replied simply changed the lyrics from "we are sailing" to "we are failing". The sad thing is that this terrible failure of a government is taking us all down with them. Kick them out. Kick them out as soon as you can.