I've been trying, I really have. I've been refraining as much as possible from commenting on the unedifying tussle to be our next entirely unelected PM. As Mark Drakeford so tartly and correctly observed, there's nothing I can say about them that they haven't already said about each other.
Indeed, I've been trying to stay off the politics as much as possible,the increasing madness of the last few years has been overwhelming, and for the sake of one's sanity alone it's necessary to keep the whole fucking shambles at arms length. How else can one respond to Liz Truss contradicting her own press release of a few hours before? Or Sunak cosplaying as a dictator because he thinks that'snwhat the membership wants?
But the problem is, you may want to avoid politics, but politics sure as hell doesn't want to avoid you. And at this shaky point in our history, as the economy teeters on the brink of recession, and the real-world impact of climate change becomes visible for all to see, I feel it's reasonable to point out that our political class doesn't appear to be up to it.
It's been depressing to watch. It's not an exaggeration to say that we stand on the verge of catastrophe. The energy prices rises this autumn will push millions of households into fuel poverty, our economy, hobbled by the self inflicted wounds of Brexit (which no politicians wish to acknowledge),imps along in the slow lane. By any metric, things are bad and getting worse. We are faced with challenges of a generational magnitude, and at a time when we need ideas and leadership we get guff about how you correctly define a woman, or how diversity training should be stopped because it's too woke.
And you have to wonder, who the fuck are they talking to at this point? Were I one of the 160k Yory party members who get to anoint our next PM, I would feel deeply insulted at the asinine level of the rhetoric designed to capture my vote. Truss's ridiculous public sector pay plans, so rapidly rowed back upon are countered by Sunak's plans to refer insufficiently patriotic people to Prevent. We're a week off bringing back hanging at this point, and perhaps two from trying to get India back.
How did it come to this? How did we wind up with such a bunch of intellectual pygmies in charge? People so manifestly unfit to face the challenges of the hour? In the depths of a climate crisis, Sunak boasts of blocking onshore wind, in the teeth if economic meltdown Truss suggests borrowing more to cut taxes.
They're deeply, deeply stupid.
And it's not as though there's some vast hinterland of untapped talent behind them. The current Conservative Party, moulded in the image of Boris Johnson, but lacking his hack's ability to turn a phrase, seems wedded to ideology. Brexit good. Woke bad. Tories of yore, while undeniably callous bastards, were, at least, pragmatic. This lot seems to believe that galloping into disaster is fine so long as you just believe hard enough. There is no plan, planning is for wimps, we just need to Brexit harder, deport more migrants, all will be well.
It's nonsense, of course. People's lives have become worse by any metric you care to name since 2010, and yet Sunak and Truss would have you believe that it's nothing to do with them or their party. The next election can't come soon enough.
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