Well another week, another runaway trainwreck of political absurdity. Where black is white and up is down. Where what you did six months ago holds no bearing on the moral high-ground you take here and now. Why are you bringing up a thing I said before that completely contradicts my current stance. DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT. In fact, fuck it. “Train-wreck” (much like a lot of Tories) doesn’t do justice. A train at least operates on two guiding principles called "tracks". It begins its journey with a destination in mind. The Johnson administration, conversely, has no such principles. It starts its engine each day unsure where it’s going or why, if it’ll u-turn, donut, stall or perhaps ignite into a fireball killing a chunk of the people inside it and yet, still, somehow it manages to come undone from even thatposition of uncertainty. Take the last two weeks. The Mail published its ridiculous article suggesting (Dep Labour Leader) Angela Rayner was trying to distract the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. We still don't know which "Senior Tory" briefed it. Some suggested it could have been Johnson himself. Clumsy, crass and rooted in cliche; It certainly sounds like something he'd say. But put aside the misogyny for a moment. The idea that Johnson is ever fully focused or in-the-detail; the idea 'distraction' is what inhibits his performance - as in, "were it not for this siren, this temptress’s naked ankles, the PM would be firing on all cylinders!" - is laughable. Rayner could be in a bin-bag, hiding in a fridge and Johnson would be the same blustery, vague and misleading sack of shit he's always been. In the aftermath of the Mail, of course, Johnson did what he always does when a cohort becomes a problem: he distanced himself. He and his team condemned the piece: "I deplore the misogyny directed at her..". And clearly they were right to do so. But come on, anyone familiar with Johnson and with his track record for sexism will feel - as I did - that such protestations only serve to remind us of a) his own odious and misogynistic behaviour and b) what a hypocrite and political opportunist he is. Rather than convincing us he has principles about this, his tweets come off as vacuous, cowardly and dishonest. I mean, do I really believe he "deplores" this? Do you? This is a man on-record saying women only go to University to find husbands. He channelled the Westminster tottymeter. Now we’re supposed to believe he finds precisely the same type of behaviour appalling? Why? When did this Incredible Hulk of grotesque sexism come back down to his more civilised Bruce Banner-esque final form? Did he finish a wank and regain composure? How long does he stay like this? And how far does the Hulk comparison go? If we piss him off at the polls in four days will he go full Banner again, throw his toys out the pram, turn green and go back to his neighbours calling the police to his domestic disturbances? "Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry," growled Boris. "I don't like you now, m8". As a Left-leaning lib-tard, of course I want to see the best in people. I want to believe that people can change. Sometimes they do. But I can't quite stretch the bounds of my imagination to capture the idea that the same guy on record for saying those things, along with "bodies pile high" and threatening to beat up journalists etc etc - that that guy would now switch to find this all distasteful. Next came #PornGate. Rumours ran amok that a senior Tory had been caught watching porn in the House of Commons (and again in Select Committee). After a few days, the name was revealed: Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton. Once he'd been outed, the whip was removed (effectively cutting him adrift from the Conservative Parliamentary Party). Now, we’re being asked to believe that Tories found his conduct so abhorrent they felt compelled to take action and kicked him out the party. Like, really, lads? That's what happened? If it were that cut-n-dry, that iron fist - why did you wait four fucking days? The more plausible explanation (to my mind) is that *in* those four days, the individual's name hadn’t leaked yet so there was was no direct pressure to sack this man *personally*. No journalists hanging around outside his house, and so on. So that gave the Tories a bit of breathing space. How can they handle it? What's the line? So being real: in that time they were probably flapping about in focus groups, with newspaper editors and beating the shit out of junior strategy aides. If they were really appalled, they'd have sacked him immediately. But they didn't because they weren't. And they weren't because Johnson isn't. And he sets the tone and the culture of the party right now. Can you honestly imagine Boris Johnson reading about "Tractors!" and "Porn in the chamber!" and women balking at the sight of the phone, and his response being "ugh no, this will not do at all". Or can you imagine him smirking about it? Writing a 'gag' about it. Sending jokes to his friends on his burner phone's WhatsApp? For Johnson to find workplace pornography unacceptable, he’d have to also be appalled by men bringing topless calendars into the office. Something one Boris Johnson did at The Telegraph despite complaints from female colleagues. So the hypocrisy, and faux disgust is breathtaking. But that was then. This is now. Now it’s Sunday and overnight the Mail have run a story about - GULP - the Labour Lib-Dem non aggression pact. Of course, faced with a Cost of Living Crisis, a housing crisis, war with a nuclear power and trailing in the polls - Tories ignored such piffle and focused on improving peoples lives. "While Labour confect outrage, Conservatives get on with the job!" as James Cleverly put it just two days ago. Just kidding. Tory chair (and "Martin from Game On" lookalike), Oliver Dowden, entered his study fresh from neutering the Electoral Commission to call someone else into the Head Master's office for undemocratic behaviour. “It appears your plans to deny voters a proper democratic choice are coming to fruition” he said, to Kier Starmer, Saturday night. A proper democratic choice. Let that sink in. Oliver Dowden is concerned about our ability to exercise democracy. Not for the first time when presented with a millionaire Oxbridge Tory, you find yourself saying “that is rich”. Because it takes some fucking balls to sit in your Grace & Favour house and come out with this nonsense. In your Vote Leave (overspend) Govt, who are redrawing electoral boundaries (to move constituency weighting to their favour), who attack the Electoral Commission (fascism, basically), and who are disingenuously introducing voter ID (to disenfranchise subsets of voters who less likely to vote Tory) - to then publicly soil yourself over a pact that's almost fucking identical to the one that got you, yourself, elected (the Johnson/Farage pact). I'm not even talking about the Conservative majority. I mean Dowden personally. His constituency, Hertsmere, voted Leave. And arguably the only reason Dowden himself won the seat is because the Brexit Party candidate, Graham Shore, stood down deliberately to not split the Right vote, thereby making a Conservative candidate the least worst option for the frothing Brexiter majority. Switch the names to Labour and Lib-Dem and you have an almost identical set of parameters. But that was then. This is now. Black is white. Up is down. It doesn't matter what was said, or what I did, six months, or two years ago. All that matters is that right now, a Lib-Lab pact might render me jobless. And for some reason you should care about that. Is that it? Are we supposed to feel bad for the Conservatives? Are we supposed to care that they might get a kicking as a result of a pact like this? Because sincerest* of apologies but I'm all out of fucks. Perhaps you can consider it your very own Loss Of Giving Crisis.
