Jeremy Hunt is your new Prime Minister! His office may say “Chancellor”. He may have shifted a few things into Number 11. But he is - by a stretch - the most powerful political figure in Britain today. And for at least the next few weeks. But above all the fanfare, the talk of “a grown-up in charge” - he is merely the latest Conservative MP to be fed to the Brexit machine. A new face to be paraded around like the voice of reason. A safe pair of hands to steady the ship. But Hunt is little more than the latest slogan, signed off by CCHQ. And behind him? Chaos. Behind him? The same Whip & Donor culture that’s hollowed out and gut-fucked the Conservatives for the past 12 years - and almost certainly with the same industrial contempt for the most desperate in society. Indeed, you should interpret this latest episode in the box-set psychodrama “Tories” as less “We get it, we’ve listened..” and more… “Poor people, RELAX. I know it was a bit scary for a minute! The food-banks, the closure of vital public services; but you’ll all be relieved to hear there’s A NEW SIGN AND LOGO… …above the entrance to the ‘Plebatoir’”. Whoever’s in charge, whatever the tagline, it will be the same inability to acknowledge reality, the same compromises over Fracking, Price Caps, Windfall Taxes and The Real E.R.G.; the same sacrificing of everyone else’s concerns. It’s difficult to imagine Tory brass uncharacteristically, ad-hoc, randomly taking a break from placating their donors. I mean, why would they? Would you take a placation from the to-do list your boss sent you? The state of British politics is such that the slightest mirage of “change” is intoxicating. Desperate to believe a new Chancellor might take the tough decisions that are needed - in the interests of the country - we merely open ourselves up to more fuckery and fairytales. “Oh, maybe he’ll raise taxes! But it’ll boost the treasury! And bring interest rates d… oh wait, no he’s given £50bn to his mate’s outsourced, Panama-registered pencil factory. FUCKING BLINDING.” Put simply: from “send it packing in 12 weeks” to “Get Brexit Done” to “Growth Growth Growth!” I know they bathe in fantasy but even I - a man who once truly believed he would become a successful standup comedian - find it hard to believe our new Chancellor could be more than a prisoner of Tory mechanics, rather than a visionary who might challenge them. The whole setup is rotten. Outdated and amoral. I used to think of British politics as four-to-five year Parliamentary terms, each one feeling like having to sit through an overlong matinee; some joyless, monotonous 15th Century thing. No emotion, no excitement, just endless, boring, toneless tedium where the only actual ‘drama’ was the scoffing of other audience members every time I sighed with disapproval. These days (in theatrical metaphor terms) it feels more like the Bond franchise. An outdated idea, using characters and styles of plot that were designed decades ago, each element leveraging off stereotype and cliche, then clumsily wrapped around the modern world by people embarrassingly removed from it. While confused, rich and detached producers, froth.. “Who can save the franchise! Who should be the next Bond?” And we all scream: “It’s not who you put out front, m8, it’s the WHOLE thing, yeh?”. Indeed, the Tories are a superficial and dated institution, devoid of credibility and corrupt to their core. Perhaps it’s nature of the beast when so many of your supporters wheel out the “we need to start running this country like a business” line. And when you sit so closely to Banks and Oil & Gas corps. I mean, we all anticipated the Conservatives might end up trying to emulate one of the big energy firms. We just never expected it to be Enron. But back to the Hunt reboot… I suppose it’s unsurprising they keep relying so much on the face, rather than what they do behind closed doors. Fits right into the Symbolism over Substance thing, doesn’t it? Don’t focus on the working poor or your mortgage payments doubling. Here’s a new Iron Lady. Forget about the “Nasty Party” stuff. Here’s “Dave” kneeling with huskies! Johnson with silly hair! £38bn wasted? - But what about the statues! You can’t get an appointment about your hip? - Look over there, someone’s kneeling. Sexual assaults by MPs? - What *is* a woman? 200k dead? - Oh, forget about the dead... …why aren’t you wearing a poppy? At least there are signs the winds are changing. Labour maintain a strong lead in the polls. A General Election is becoming more likely by the day. Boris Johnson’s “real boss”, The Telegraph, published a piece conceding project fear was right all along; The Mail are in outright attack mode. Conservative rule feels like it’s at that awkward, frantic moment about one or two moves before checkmate. They’ve run on the fumes of Bluster and Boosterism for so long but the Grim Reaper of substance and objective reality has (seemingly) finally caught up with them. Hunt is one of those last, panicked, pre-checkmate moves. The latest attempt by Tory grandees to put a fresh sheen on a dried-out, crumbling turd and while there’s absolutely a place for his measured-but-direct delivery, we shouldn’t let our guard down for one second with regards to trusting this administration. They’ve shown with Brexit, Covid and most-recently the mini-budget precisely whose interests they govern in. Equally, Hunt showed (as Health Sec) that he placed loyalty to his party above his brief. So while it might be tempting to subscribe to the idea of a sensible figure taking the reins, an adult in the room, a grown-up in charge - even if he had the power to effect the changes needed... Not all grown-ups are nice.
