The Conservative Party leadership contest reminds me of that Quentin Tarantino film, only now it’s called The Hateful Tory Eight. Count them – eight, and not one you’d trust to run a raffle, never mind a country.
It is only a week since Boris Johnson dragged his entitled arse into Downing Street to make that graceless and petulant resignation speech.
A bitter and self-pitying farewell (and he’s not even gone yet).
No recognition that it was all his own fault, no nod to the flaws in his character that brought him down.
Scratch that – let’s settle for fissures. Flaws doesn’t capture the deep inadequacies, the mendacity, the vanity, the egotism, the grandiloquent self-absorption, the apparent belief that no one knew better than him, alongside all that toadying to billionaires and oligarchs.
Johnson portrayed himself as the blameless victim brought down by the “relentless sledging” of his own side. Rewriting his own history in that sulky oration, he referred again to “his mandate” – as if his party, his MPs had nothing to do with it. A very Trumpian aversion to reality.
Anyway, he’s gone, or going. The worst prime minister this country has ever seen leaves behind the disastrous mess of his inglorious Brexit (hope you’re enjoying the “new golden age”). Yet even now his faithful newspapers, chiefly the Daily Mail, are recasting history to his shape, still manipulating the truth to burnish Boris.
Now we peer down from the cheap seats in the upper circle to watch the film. It’s weird this contest to choose the next Tory leader and prime minister. We have no say, for this is a private Tory matter, but one with horribly public consequences.
What a way to organise a country. Endless media coverage as if this was something we could affect, whereas the choice is whittled down by Tory MPs and the eventual decision lies with Conservative Party members in a postal vote. A tiny constituency, deciding for a party now in thrall, post-Johnson, to wealth and Brexit lies, and bearing little relation to the Conservative Party of old (and that was bad enough)
As for the contestants, anyone outside of the charmless Conservative circle will wonder what we’ve done to deserve this this shameless lot.
Only the other week, chief players in The Hateful Tory Eight were routinely sticking up for Boris Johnson, parroting untruths to shore up his lies, evasions and corruption. Now they pretend to shiny newness and difference, while Rishi Sunak pledges to fix the economy he oversaw until, oh, only last week.
Here’s who is standing at the time of writing: Sunak, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat, Nadhim Zahawi and Kemi Badenoch.
All seem to be keen on cutting taxes and waging culture wars. None mentions the NHS or climate change. Sunak seems to be the favourite, although Johnson and his allies are said to be plotting against the former chancellor in revenge for what they see as his betrayal.
He had a slick video produced “almost overnight” (that’s what his side are claiming). Whenever it was knocked together, it’s a slickly terrible video that introduces his appalling slogan, Ready For Rishi. And begins with the words: “Let me tell you a story…”
Or sell you a Tory, much the same thing. The story he wants to sell is about his grandmother, his modest roots, and overlooks his vast personal wealth, the even more bottomless wealth of his wife.
Nadhim Zahawi is another multi-millionaire and you do have to wonder how people so ridiculously wealthy can have any idea about the lives of ordinary people – or the struggles many have.
Braverman is weirdly unpleasant, loves the culture wars stuff, and only the other day told ITV News: “There are too many people in this country who are of working age, who are of good health, and who are choosing to rely on benefits.”
She said this without offering proof, without acknowledging that 40 per cent of those claiming Universal Credit are in work but in jobs so badly paid they need government support.
Another vile urban myth incanted like a bad spell.
Liz Truss, that second-rate Thatcher tribute act, has good odds. Even though only the other week, in an example of her grip on things, she was heard on television referring to the Irish Taoiseach as the “Irish Tea Sock”.
I can’t run through them all; too exhausting, too depressing.
Johnson may have resigned in disgrace, but the right-wing populism he summoned up will not go away. All the candidates, however much they may squabble, are chanting the same lines: raising taxes, fighting Brexit all over again, turning on the immigration claxon, sending migrants to Rwanda, while saying nothing about what will be cut to pay for those lower taxes.
The Hateful Eight had an original ending much more violent than the one that went out. What sort of an ending will The Hateful Tory Eight Have?