Sunak's At A Crossroads. The One You Arrive At When You’re Dead.

The modern Conservative party are absolutely fucked. Poll-wise, existentially, they have no vision, no leadership, their future prospects are abysmal and frankly it’s difficult to watch.

I mean, it’s difficult to watch anything when it’s literally bringing you to orgasm. Most of us close our eyes in those moments. Or at least most of my sexual partners did. Possibly to focus on the physical intensity of said moment, but probably so they didn’t have to witness my own facial expressions, at the height of such intensity.

Anyway, *on* failing partnerships, yes, the Conservatives are doomed. 

By now I’m sure you’re aware of how they propelled their best and brightest from the books in 2019. Moderates like Theresa May… which sounds utterly ridiculous, I know. The fact a cold-hearted, immigrant-bashing mascot of “GO HOME!” and “the nasty party” like Theresa May can now - retrospectively - be seen as a moderate should tell you everything you need to know about how far we’ve sunk. But still: Moderates like May… Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke… were replaced with (or neutered by) a new ilk: your Scott Bentons, your Ben Bradleys, your Lee Andersons;

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: the sort of candidate you’re going to get in a (former) Labour stronghold, with a perceived defeat on the cards, is NOT going to be a particularly impressive individual. It’s a testing ground, to see how you perform. It’s rough diamonds, slim pickings, ten-to-two’s;

Step forward Betfair Benton, Ben “they’ll only spend it on crack” Bradley, Lee “30p” Anderson, Jonathan “Johnathan Gullis” Gullis…

These are people who stood as the Tory candidate either in the absence of serious candidates who would never agree to taking six weeks off their proper job to campaign for a seat they were unlikely to win - OR - they were the preferred candidate (over more serious options) but the Best & Brightest skill they brought to the table was “I LiKe BoRrIs!”

And now we’re through the other side of it.

Indeed now we have Rishi Sunak as PM, supposedly a moderate, who’s going to have to reason with this lot and win them over. 

A group of people who rallied behind Johnson when he said May’s deal was shit. Who then voted for that deal which effectively was May’s deal in all but name. Who then rejected the need to scrutinise it, so certain were they that they loved this deal they previously said they hated - but who now say the deal they said they loved that they previously said they hated, they now hate again. Have I got that right?

These are the great minds of the Conservative Party that Sunak has to appease. A morally bankrupt fun-bus of flag-fuckers who can always be relied upon to demand we abandon our logic if it so much as *momentarily* troubles their British Exceptionalism. 

And if he fails? A 100-strong mutiny over tweaks to the Brexit deal is rumoured be erupting. 

Christ, imagine having to reason with people like Gullis. Or Desmond Swayne. REASONING WITH DESMOND SWAYNE, F**K ME IN THE VATICAN, a man so ferociously stupid he could come away the junior partner in post-coital pillow talk with a sex doll.

Indeed, in the midst of this week’s well-documented Tomato-drought, Swayne stood up, in the House of Commons, so certain was he that he had something of substance to say, some way of fixing things, of reassuring the public - many of whom must be bewildered that the Sunlit Uplands they were promised have been Rail Replacement Bus Service’d for Shit In The Rivers and a flare-up of Scurvy. 

Swayne arose. This was his moment.

“If only we’d been told before voting for Brexit that it would cause frost in Morocco…”. 

<mic drop>

<tumbleweed blows up>

<tumbleweed looks around at the FUCKED UP atmosphere>

<tumbleweed blows ITSELF the fuck up outta there>

I guess we can’t be too cynical here. The Govt’s case against Shamima Begum was essentially that - regardless of having been groomed and trafficked across international borders to become someone’s child bride - the fact was, she may have been exposed to (and de-sensitised by) extreme violence. So through her possible proximity to violence, she might be violent. She might have caught violence, guys.

If it’s possible to catch violence, maybe stupidity’s airborne?

Swayne’s charge is that idiot Remainers were blaming the absence of vegetables on Brexit, but that this was all down to weather. Which is sort of true, but it’s an attitude that champions precisely the sort simplistic, devoid-of-nuance approach to politics that you’d expect from him. The weather has frustrated crop production, but had we still been in the European Union, we would have our shelves full as a priority, before anything was shipped and sold outside of it. That’s why supermarkets in Dublin, Athens, Paris and Northern Ireland remain full.

Is he wilfully ignoring the 3rd-Country aspects of our fruit n veg supply chain? Is he not aware of it? Has he not been briefed? Or is he pretending to be stupid? Is he hoping that you are?

Between the (political arm of the) Real ERG, the DUP, the 1922 Committee, the Treasury’s advisors and what must be an exhaustingly-tedious Boris Johnson buzzing about,causing him problems - Rishi Sunak is as much a prisoner as every other recent Prime Minister. He needs to achieve growth, but he can’t do that without the Single Market. And he can’t be seen to be admitting that. He can’t join the Single Market because the ERG would launch a Vote of No Confidence. He could radically lower tax and hope the economy balloons but Truss tried that and it opened a £30bn vortex that Hunt’s still trying to climb out of. He could let immigrants in to plug the labour shortage and service the ageing population, but the other faction (the careerist sociopaths, your Suellas, Patels, not to mention satellite Tories like Farage and Tice) would eat him alive. 

Every which way he turns to look for support or another option, he’s doomed. 25-degrees to the right. Nope. Another 25 degrees, nope again. Another 25 degrees, still no. Until he’s come full circle. Fucked².  And all of this against the backdrop of an NHS, Mortgages, Cost of Living and Housing Crisis that’s probably about 8 weeks from civil unrest.

Sunak is at a crossroads, the one you get to when you’re dead.