Third time lucky. Or is it fourth? Who cares.
Doubtless, King Charles will have had another ‘dear, oh dear’ up his well-pulled sleeve.
Vividly staking his pro-Brexit bent and trumpeting the exit, sans non-withdrawal agreement, in the spring of 2019, was Sunak’s blueprint. Unswervingly, he went on to claim ‘proximity to a market’ as harmful. ‘Agility, flexibility and freedom provided by Brexit’ would be his thing.
Five PMs on, and Cameron’s wrecking ball has done its worst. We knew. They knew. But these days, politics ain’t for wusses and Trusses. Inertia, economic chaos and whatever the opposite of freedom is, and is now Sunak’s for the asking. ̕ Cos he’s the boss now, (not ‘Boris’, I’m afraid, dearest Nadine Dorries) because the Tory party, with all its grubby little side-lines – is big business.
I hope someone calls Sunak out on his current Brexit aspirations as PM, but probably no-one will.
Sunak ‘came from nothing’, went to something and ended up with ‘everything.’ In a short documentary piece, our dashing young whippet Rishi – still a student – premières his drive and desires to be the richest boy at the party. And nothing he will ever do or say from now until a Labour victory could change his ethos. His motto? Sod anyone who has nothing. And double-sod anyone wanting to apply for asylum, or god forbid, aspiring to a career as a carer, triage nurse or strawberry picker. Everyone is welcome. Apart from you.
These weirdly prescient mini-documentaries are quite something. There’s a darkly bizarre profile of Rees-Mogg at the age of twelve. Master Jacob, chauffeur-driven, balls still in his chest cavity, creakily pronounces brightly that he will have enough dosh to buy the car he’s being chauffeured in. He’s on his way to his father’s bank, Coutts, to whack in another cheque. His father, humouring his peculiar young charge, quaintly opened Baby Jacob’s junior account, lobotomised him with a spoon and a promise that nanny would take him to work very soon. He’s still there, old Jakey. Backed Johnson, who then backed away. Quite where the ERG dances these days will be interesting.
New balls, please.
Sunak’s ‘SpAd’ded little 91-second speech was a doddle for the poor sod from The Institute of Highly Unsurprising Affairs. Zero mandate. No questions asked or answered. A new PM who deemed it ‘silly’ to assist with energy costs. A man worth £730m, with assets climbing in value, as he nukes universal credit and helps his banker mates with the coolest £7.3bn tax-relax.
All this and he was staring down the wrong camera. Hardly the statesman. More the impatient young Goldman Sachs newbie, desperate for a wee.
Remember when we puzzled and tutted over how Priti Patel could have been so hideous a Home Secretary? Imagine then, how we feel about Braverman, re-ignited as Home Secretary! Her inexplicable sheer evil (‘my Rwandan dream’ etc) gets a second incarnation.
Of course, there’s still the European Court of Human Rights to be shredded. And that’s just a first draft. That will show ̓em – those young aspiring brown folk, seeking a decent future.
And this is the reality for those unfortunates: if the boat makes it across the channel, and they don’t fall into the trap of thinking their ‘port reference’ is an actual application for asylum – because, of course, they know nothing of these things – they might get to ‘live’ here.. It’s more likely that they discover that the Gatwick hotel into which they’re crammed, eight to a room, is not the gateway to a better, safer life. Quite the reverse.
But even that cruel imitation of life in the UK is impossible. Because there’s a new PM. And he doesn’t like other brown people. Well, not the poor aspiring ones. Like him. But, crow the media, there’s always the chance that you could watch your ‘migrant’ child grow up to be PM, just like our Rishi!
So, one hundred career-massaging Tories voted for Rishi Sunak to be caretaker of 70 million-odd Brits, 18 million of whom can’t even feed themselves or their kids. Cutting services and hiking tax does not a mandate make. Sunak has his ‘difficult choices’ and ‘a struggle ahead.’ Put aside his actual fear of the working class, put aside that he thought Darlington was in Scotland, put aside that he’s the wealthiest parliamentarian in Europe, doling out the cruellest cuts to UK services. The ‘struggles ahead’ are not his. They’re ours.
Sunak reshuffling Suella Braverman back into the human-hatred hot-seat tells us all we need to know about him. Any connection, compassion, political will or policy he claims to advocate – to protect the welfare of vulnerable brown and black people – is a sham. Unless drastic U-turns are implemented (Rwanda, indefinite detention, the occupation-shortage visa, the hideous Nationality & Borders Bill – the list goes on), this is currently impossible with ‘deportation-dream’ Braverman as Home Secretary.
She has form. Suella Braverman did not accidentally leak email correspondence. She repeatedly juggled cabinet documents, using her private account. She was caught by a fellow minister, emailing the wife of veteran back-bencher John Hayes. Mistakenly. This is a serious ministerial breach. It is being fluffed over, in true Tory style, and has a similar stench to Patel’s secret meetings.
Rishi Sunak’s speech, with all its talk of integrity, is already another big old grubby Tory lie, then. And, with immigration as its very sick scapegoat, the mildly reshuffled party cabinet is back in business. A climate-change denier is in charge of the environment. Raab’s bill of rights is heinous: basic human rights will founder. Gove is levelling something-or-other …and Hunt…I’ve forgotten. Keeping up with the cast of ‘The Mousetrap’ was easier.
‘The grown-ups are back in charge’? Nope. This is fascism. Pure and simple. Fascism, which, as Michael Rosen famously said, “arrives as your friend”.
I’ll be in the Wendy house. The Chief Whip’s getting the fancies out.
