Drink heavily, buckle up, and let's get started with a visit to the Tory Party Conference, where the most dense things in the known universe are packed into one room, and we all pray it reaches critical mass and explodes.
Yet another #TheWeekInTory:
1. Liz Truss – ITV4 made flesh – got dressed up as a fictional fascist to present her List Of People Who Disagreed With Me, and are therefore enemies.
2. No news yet on whether the “enemies list ” included Liz Truss from the previous day, who believed in different things.
3. In her speech to the Insane Clown Posse, Truss said there was “no alternative” and “I am ready to make the hard choices”.
4. Barely 24 hours earlier she’d switched to an alternative because the hard choices were too hard.
5. Truss claimed said she had reduced taxes for millions.
6. The IFS found for every £1 given to workers in tax cuts, £2 was being taken via a freeze in thresholds;
7. And the Telegraph reported the tax burden had risen £21 billion.
8. The government insisted windfall taxes would damage energy companies and prevent them from doing essential investment…
9. The boss of Shell Oil – Truss’s former employer – called on the government to impose a windfall tax on them and said it wouldn’t affect investment.
10. On a roll – or perhaps crack, it’s hard to tell – Truss then claimed she was the first Prime Minister to go to a comprehensive school.
11. She isn’t even the first female Tory PM of the last 5 years to go to a comprehensive school (May’s school was a comp when she was there).
12. Truss refused to confirm she trusted Kwarteng.
13. Kwarteng clearly has personal concerns about the job market, and claimed Tories inherited record unemployment from Labour.
14. They didn’t – it was 7.9 per cent in 2010, compared to 10.7 per cent under Major, and 11.9 per cent under Thatcher.
15. The next fiscal event being left on our doorsteps was due on 23 Nov
16. The government brought that forward to calm markets.
17. Then Kwarteng rattled the market again by forgetting he’d brought the date forward.
18. Kwarteng then blamed the cock-ups on the Queen being dead.
19. Truss said
“I grew up in the 1980s, which were characterised by boarded-up shops, people with no hope turning to drugs, families struggling to put food on the table. And that’s why we need to get back to Thatcherism”.
20. Thatcher was in charge when all of that happened.
21. Truss’s brain is like a dazzlingly high-tech stealth weapon: impossible to detect, but still capable of inflicting enormous damage.
22. She went on to say she wanted to “stabilise the markets”.
23. In 2018 a seemingly completely different Truss said “I embrace chaos”.
24. That version of Liz Truss must be over the f*cking moon.
25. Truss – seemingly in battery-saving mode – promised the conference “growth, growth, growth”.
26. The pound immediately dropped, gilts rose, the FTSE fell, and the UK’s credit rating was downgraded to “negative”.
27. But at least Jacob Rees-Mogg – the precise physical intersection of a cursed dildo and the concept of gout – has plans for nuclear power.
28. Unfortunately his plans are: use nuclear tech that doesn’t exist, and reduce safety measures for nuclear tech that does exist.
29. Then it was discovered he’d been “seeking to evade scrutiny” of fracking.
30. Downing St sources called his plans “half-baked” and “unworkable”, which will come as a shock to everyone familiar with the “research” done by the former head of the European Research Group.
31. JRM said “if people want to call me Tory scum, I don’t mind”. Over to you, twitter!
32. Even after the tax U-turn, the richest people still gain 40x more than the poorest.
33. A report found 330,000 deaths linked to austerity, so the government said: more of that, please.
34. Corporation Tax cuts cost £18.7 bn, and the Kwarteng confirmed £18 bn of cuts to public sector.
35. So it’s a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to corporations.
36. £18 bn is £3600 every hour for 558 years, taken from the poor and handed to the rich.
37. The 10 most common reasons a lawyer is disbarred include: misleading people, moral turpitude, and being unethical.
38. Suella Braverman, a lawyer, “justified” cutting benefits by misleadingly claiming people “choose to top up their salaries” with welfare.
"Choose to".
39. Braverman, also claimed to have “contributed” to a legal textbook.
40. The book’s author says she “made no written or editorial contribution”, merely did some photocopying for him.
41. She the revealed an asylum plan that the UNHCR says breaks international conventions.
42. Braverman – who is what happens when a Horcrux gets into a guinea pig – waxed lyrical about shoving the most desperate people on earth onto a plane and flying them to a detention centre in Rwanda. “That’s my dream. That’s my obsession”.
43. Senior Tory backbencher Roger Gale called it
“a childish re-write of failed UKIP soundbites”.
44. Nadine Dorries was dragged away from a fight over the outcome of a meat-raffle long enough to say Truss had “lurched to the right”, has “no mandate”, and should call an election.
45. Truss blamed it all on Kwarteng;
46. So Gove attacked Truss;
47. Then Badenoch attacked Gove;
48. So Mordaunt attacked them all;
49. Then Braverman attacked Truss;
50. So Simon Hoare and Badenoch both attacked Braverman.
51. These squabbling wangs are our government.
52. Lee Anderson – a physics-defying vacuum which actually repels ideas – said the economy will only have a “big problem” when Wetherspoons are empty.
53. Wetherspoons warned of £30m losses, and put nearly three-dozen pubs up for sale.
54. The belligerently-awful Andrea Jenkyns said, “we want universities to be bastions of free speech, not pushing critical race theory”.
55. So free speech, but only if it coincides with what Andrea Jenkyns’ thinks. Assuming she does.
56. She went on to claim people were getting a degree in Harry Potter Studies rather than construction.
57. 245000 students are studying courses related to construction. The number of students taking degrees in Harry Potter Studies is precisely [checks notes] zero.
58. Miriam Cates told a fringe event that further education should be cut back to “stop young people being indoctrinated”.
59. Schools and hospitals have been told to find £11 billion of cuts, and I’m sure that’s drawing millions of students to the Tory cause.
60. More health news: and having learned lessons from Covid, Thérèse Coffey rejected scientific advice and cancelled 70,000 doses of Monkeypox vaccine.
61. Meanwhile David Davis – so good they named him once – said we should replace the NHS with a US-style insurance-based system.
62. Truss’s favourability ratings are now lower than the worst ever scores for Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn … and she’s only been in the job 30 days.
63. Let’s wrap up our visit to the Tory’s annual f*ckwit jamboree, which started badly and ended worse
64. Several people at a party celebrating LGBT diversity amongst Tories had to be removed from the event after using homophobic slurs
I'm contractually obliged to mention my book – out this month – https://unbound.com/books/the-decade-in-tory
But it’s tough time for everyone, so – if you can – I’d prefer you to make a donation to your local foodbank or via The Trussell Trust. Your generosity will help somebody in real need. Thanks
Originally tweeted by Russ Jones (@RussInCheshire) on 06/10/2022.
