Another week, another total absence of Government at a time of national crisis. Leadership vacuum doesn't do it justice. We are now the Mary Celeste of Western Liberal Democracy. There is an obvious Boris Johnson-shaped hole at the top of the Tory party, that both frustrates and confuses. Frustrates, because the only thing the care-taker PM appears to be taking care of, is his days owed and Amex air-miles balance. And confuses because, well, why are we even frustrated when he barely fucking did anything when he was here? This is a guy who didn’t want to hand-over to a caretaker PM and assured the British people he would “continue” to serve their interests until his successor was in - but who’s spent the entire time fucking about on holidays, flying in Typhoon jets and getting mash-up in Chequers, with his wife - who is, I suppose - another Boris Johnson-shaped hole, in her own way. The supporting cast are still just as useless. Nadhim Zahawi, for example, took time out from using tax money to heat his horse stables, to tell Sky News that "Britons on £45,000 are going to need help with their gas and electric too". Well, quite. But sorry, is that supposed to be reassuring? You’re the literal Chancellor of the Exchequer, mate. You have your hands on the levers, right now, as you're saying that. You could fix the thing you are personally warning about! Perhaps if this bit-part as "Senior Cabinet Minister" doesn’t pan out, Zahawi could explore Hollywood? He could play a sociopathic murderer… with a conscience. **Stab Stab Stab** “Ooh, someone should put a band-aid on that.” **Stab Stab Stab** There’s a well-worn pearl of wisdom in performance circles that if you feel anxious speaking to crowds, you should picture your audience naked. You know, to disarm them, make the whole thing feel silly, to remind you that everyone’s just a human being and hope it takes the edge off. I wonder if there’s a similar dynamic we could explore with Zahawi. We could dress lobby journalists like pantomime horses December-to-Jan so he gets confused at his podium and announces he’s willing to spend public money on us to keep us warm. Although it doesn’t feel like it, some things are progressing: Those of us who are in-touch with the impending collapse of the British economy are now past the first three stages of dystopia: Denial, Anger, Bargaining; we now comfortably reside in the fourth: hands-over-face, hysterical “well, of course! Fuck it!”, inconsolable sobbing. This can often be coupled with a tumbler of triple-shot bourbon. Mix with tears, as appropriate. If you could bare to part the fingers covering your eyes you may have noticed that OFGEM confirmed, Thursday, what had been predicted for some time; that bills will go up by eighty percent. EIGHTY FUCKING PERCENT. Remember back in April when it went from £1.2k to £1.9k and everyone lost their minds? “How is my mum going to afford this!?” we cried. “I’m on Universal Credit, there’s no way I can budget like that!?” others screamed. “Oh, nonsense, young povvers. Just work your way out of it!” said Boris Johnson (paraphrasing, slightly). Well, in four weeks it’ll be £3.5k/year. Put simply: the average heating bill will have gone from £100/month to £300/month. And in April it’s being reported (though not confirmed, yet) that it’ll double again to £600. And don't rule that out. April just gone people were balking at a rumoured forty percent hike in October. We now know that figure doubled, so why should this one not do the same? So.. forgive me if - when I see headlines like “BORIS: Cash Is On the Way” - I don’t breathe a sigh of relief. He’s known about this for months, literally months, and for almost ALL of it, he’s been a shameless Caligulan party-boy, no doubt auto-forwarding his bills to donors while telling the rest of us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And all of this is against the backdrop of a culty AF, Koolaid Conservative Party whose only consistent policy of the last five years is “Good things are coming! No really! Stay with us! It’s just around the corner!” One wonders if they think this is just another chapter in the Culture War? Do they think they can just bury their heads in the sand? Dodge and duck scrutiny? Dismiss people like Martin Lewis as experts? Others as snowflakes? And on the rare occasion one of their own puts their head above the parapet, they can phone-in a lukewarm one-liner to extinguish it, like “Nah it’s totes cool, stick with us, extra cash! On the way! Sunlit uplands are coming! OMFG LOOK OVER THERE! PRO-NOUNS!” But as was the case in August, and in July, and in April, and back in October and just like it was with delayed lockdowns and like it is with the inevitable return of Visas to europeans to help out in some employment sectors - our response is the same: "Great, m8. Anytime you're ready, no rush or anything..." Perhaps they think they can use their other mode of deflection: patriotism. If we criticise the Govt, if we playfully suggest Liz Truss should spend less time worrying about how to get into Vogue and more on whether your Gran will freeze to death by Christmas - I can totally see them boxing it up as “doomsters and gloomsters”, as “hating Britain”. And look, who knows? Maybe it’ll work? Cast your mind back to those EU Referendum vox-pops, to the cretins you see on Question Time, to brigade of bellendry out there who truly believe, TRULY, that the European Union is some evil, over-arching Death Star trying to take away their freedom. Now imagine an on-message media funnelling out the idea that it’s better to sit shivering in your bedsit than replicate a, I dunno, dirty, communist, EU-style (meaningful) price-cap. No one critiques the media/govt relationship because the last person who did was Maitlis and now she's got Telegraph opinionistas telling her she's the Meghan Markle of journalism. You try to tell your Dad to sign the petition to get a price-cap implemented. "Balderdash!" he says. "This is Britain. We do things our OWN way! This is basically the Blitz!" You catch a glimpse of a Mail headline in the only shop that's still open (the petrol station), imploring its readers to "Show the French and Germans what you’re made of, you bloody bulldoggy bastard! Freeze! FREEZE FOR BRITAIN!" A few weeks later, you wake up, make a barely mixed, cold coffee and walk outside. It's December 1st and minus three. Your cul-de-sac is littered with the bodies of frozen 60-somethings. Each one is wearing a winter coat adorned with a Union Jack, a flag that they truly believed they died for. Your street looks like the fucking Death Zone of Everest. And it’s weird to think - all of it could be avoided now, if they just, you know, governed properly and maybe took a stake in the energy firms? But as I say, we're past the first three stages of Dystopia now. I'm no longer angry or trying to bargain. Ranting is pointless when there's such an absence of government. Who am I even shouting at?
