It's been silly season in British politics for a while now, but as this lame, mortally wounded administration stumbles blindly on, praying for miracles, it's only getting weirder.
A particularly baffling symptom which, unless you're as terminally addicted to politics twitter as I am, has probably blissfully passed you by is the campaigning by the Conservative MP for Uxbridge, Steve Tuckwell, he of the mildly successful anti-ULEZ hold in Johnson's old seat which prompted Sunak to go all-in on "driver's rights".
Upon what pressing issue has Tuckwell chosen to nail his colours to the mast? Is he back on ULEZ? Trying to wring a bit more political capital from the world's most divorced men taking angle grinders to traffic lights? Is he perhaps pulling the regular Conservative Parliamentary hopeful trick of focusing on the woefulness of local services and blaming the council, while quietly avoiding mentioning that said council has had its budget slashed to the bone by his own administration?
No, no. Our Steve has been all over the gaff campaigning for, uh, a fish and chip shop? It is his contention that the good burghers of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, when they're not too busy frothing about their right to drive heavily polluting vehicles, are being deprived of a chippy tea. Not exactly climate change or cozzy livs, as pressing issues go, I'd argue.
Now, this gets better. It turns out that when Steve was a mere councillor,two short years ago, a planning application was made for a chip shop in amongst the trattorias and charming bistros of this leafy Tory enclave, and Steve, bless his cottons, voted against it.
So far, so baffling. Set aside the patronizing nature of the campaign ("I say, what do those awful people like?" "Um, chips?") in itself and consider the fact that a Conservative, someone who is supposed to be a champion of market forces, is trying to dictate what businesses go where? Sounds a little Soviet, no?
All this oddity has a more straightforward explanation, the whole thing was merely a data-scraping exercise, a chance to get a few names and addresses Which begs the question, why go through all this rigmarole? Who thought this was a good idea?
The point I'm somewhat clumsily trying to make is that while this weird little story is a local, minor matter, it speaks to scrambled minds in the party at large. They're cooked, they're done. And as the iceberg floats ever nearer they get odder, and ever more frantic. Going to be an interesting few months
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