The Tory Leadership candidates are out in full force now, aren’t they? It’s easy to mock. You don’t have to stray too far in the wild to see the usual comparisons to The Apprentice, Lord of the Flies and so on. All jokes aside though - it’s really quite tragic. Here we have a conveyor belt of over promoted Peter Principles, each one publishing their Times and Telegraph piece professing to be the one, head-screwed-on candidate that can unite the Conservatives and take the country forward; this is while *simultaneously* plotting to take down their rivals and further anchor us in the chaos of the 2016 referendum. “If you don’t let me unite us, Penny, so help me God I’ll gut your entire team and publish those photos of your husband at the Torture Garden” Not one of them publicly acknowledges the insanity of Brexit. The closest is probably Tom Tugendhat, who appears to - at the very least - inhabit the same postcode as objective reality. But even he has pushed back on any suggestion that we should re-enter the single market. If the EU Referendum were held again today, Remain would win by a landslide (whatUKthinks.org). Parties with a softer stance toward Europe are polling ahead of the conservatives (12pts, YouGov). You have to wonder why the Tories are so enamoured by a policy that’s so obviously manifestly failed and that polls so poorly among the electorate? If you talk to your friends, from High Wycombe to Manchester to Scotland and back - do any of them suggest that Brexit has been worth it? Are any of them able to articulate how they’ve personally benefited from its implementation? And I mean properly. Not some childish “well it’s pissing off ALL the right people” nonsense. I mean, I enjoy annoying my girlfriend. Not sure I’d pursue it to the economic devastation of the household though tbh. Paradoxically, as we step out from behind the shadow of Johnson’s moral vacancy, we hear a lot about “fresh starts” and “honesty and integrity matter”. And yet in lieu of credible, transparency with matters like Brexit or indeed the supply of Natural Gas or the tanking Pound making petrol significantly more expensive - we actually get moredishonesty and obfuscation. Brexit is scarcely mentioned. Gas is watered down to “a firm commitment to our friends in Ukraine”. There is no castigating damnation of Johnsonism, the lies, the authoritarianism, the corruption; instead, they are all grateful for getting the big calls right. The guy fucked everything he touched, metaphorically and literally. The only calls he got right were those to his Crisis Management team and the subsequent dials to Zelenskyy. How are we supposed to heal, to move on and to succeed when the next batch of lunatics refuse to confront the components of our failures and instead celebrate the fuckery of the legacy PM? “Ms Braverman, do you think it’s time to appraise Brexit, to wind down the Culture War and to hold off on this frankly divisive and at times *illegal* brand of Govt?” “Good question. But I have one for you: Why Do You Hate BrItAiN?” To some extent you might expect that kind of nonsense from the, err, more seasoned of the Tories; the grey haired, double breasted suit types. Base level, pub bore noise, fog-horned in response to a question they hadn’t prepped for. But we see the same in the younger candidates too.. Kemi Badenoch, would you believe, is the same age as me, Dear Reader. That means she grew up in an era of the Prodigy, Friends, and Adam Sandler movies. So how in the name of salt-water buggery has she found herself in the Times saying I’m The Anti-Woke Candidate and pillorying the social justice movement? She inhabits a space on the far right of the Tories. The Guardian pitched her as having a similar Culture War and division vibe as Braverman. Except, in addition, Kemi Badenoch was condemning “empty rhetoric and platitudes”. Look, I’m going to be honest. When a right winger looks at a law breaking Attorney General, a convicted PM and an authoritarian fascist administration and criticises them for just talking-the-talk - I balk “actually empty rhetoric is fine, if it's all the same, bruhh” It's like... “Sup, Kemi, you hear Johnson’s taken control of the Electoral Commission, he’s disbanding the Standards Committee and he’s criminalised protest!” “Pffff all mouth no trousers, that guy.” From Steve Baker and Ben Wallace’s now defunct to pitches, through to Penny Mourdant and Rishi Sunak - the caliber is low, the predictability high. They’re all running on Brexit. They’re all going for that sweet spot, that ever-decreasing minority of, well, dying, racist pensioners - and dwindling numbers of Express readers. But that number is falling dramatically. It is no longer the majority, if indeed it ever was (see Proportional Representation). What we’ve seen in the last two weeks is a PM brought down *despite* the avid support he receives from the Sun and the Mail. The tectonic plates of British politics have shifted. The next general election is Labour’s to lose. And the current crop of Tory leadership candidates - if hectic and erratic in every other facet of their political lives - seem totally at peace with that.
