A WEEK!
You take a week off, and what happens? The Evil News Pixie writes about sex.
Sex, readers!
Badger was appalled.
He never knew such things were possible, except within the snug safety of one’s sett and a cosy bed shared with Mrs Badger.
Badger thought having sex on a computer would be an uncomfortable experience.
Imagine all those sharp angles digging into your delicate underpants’ areas.
At least, Badger thinks that’s what the little imp meant.
Mrs Badger had to explain some of it to him afterwards.
With diagrams.
But never mind sex.
A week!
You take a week off, and what happens?
First, the Home Secretary goes.
It was Suella Braverman, so Badger reacted with equanimity.
Well, barely disguised pleasure.
Then there’s chaos in a vote on fracking, with allegations of bullying and physical intimidation to get MPs through the voting lobby.
Had the Chief Whip quit, or had the Deputy Chief Whip quit?
Nobody knew until the early hours of the morning.
Then, the PM met with the Chair of the 1922 Committee.
Poor Liz Truss!
Stitched like a kipper, hung out to dry, deserted by her supporters, Liz Truss made a statement in which she announced her resignation.
And Badger hadn’t even got to the weekend.
Soaking up the Mediterranean sun, Badger reflected that Boris Johnson resigned the last time he took a break.
He detected a pattern in events.
That’s bad news for Rishi Sunak.
Badger’s birthday weekend is not that far away, and a short break beckons.
With chaos back in Blighty, Badger waited for comedy gold to drop from the heavens.
Boris Johnson did not disappoint.
The cut price Churchill hastened home from a freebie holiday in the Caribbean (taken while the House of Commons descended into the sort of disorder it hasn’t seen since – umm – June when Boris Johnson was PM).
His usual trumpeters announced he would selflessly answer the call of a disordered desperate nation and plunge it into deeper depths of desperation and disorder.
Badger felt his claws begin to itch, especially after he saw an overseas edition of a prominent British tabloid hailing Mr Johnson’s potential return as though our former PM had single-handedly won the Second World War and cured cancer.
If you want to see why the UK is economically and politically circling the bowl like a stray turd, look no further than the havoc the Right Honourable member wreaked.
Last week, Badger noted Jonathan Edwards’s article opining that Brexit has been a disaster.
Mr Edwards is right.
It’s not the economic aspect Badger talks about here.
The level of Brexit’s economic success needs no further comment from Badger.
The record speaks for itself.
No, readers, Badger means in politics.
Brexit has been a political disaster for the UK.
One of the two large parties of government, the most successful election-winning machine in Europe, has ended up being led by a tiny factional rump comprised of fringe nutters and ideologues without a clue about what a government does and what a government should do.
The Conservatives used to pride themselves on their party being a broad church able to reconcile many different political views.
Instead of a broad church, it increasingly resembled a cult led by cultists.
The idea that Kenneth Clarke – now Lord Clarke – an arch-Thatcherite before the word was coined, is a wet lefty is nonsense.
The notion that Penny Mordaunt or Michael Gove are not “proper conservatives” is equally laughable.
A broad church became the exclusive brethren.
The success of a few Conservative MPs from the ERG, working hand-in-glove with Jeremy Corbyn, to thwart Brexit under Theresa May led to ERG members of puny intellects and narrow views wielding influence they did not merit both before December 2019 and afterwards.
An extremist tail wagged the big dog of government to horrendous effect.
For five vital years in the UK’s political history, poseurs and ideological headbangers reigned supreme.
You’ve seen the results of their primacy.
Never again.
Not never again to a Conservative government.
You can’t have a vigorous political debate and functioning democracy without an alternative to the party in power.
However, the disastrous experiment of giving the monkeys the keys to the banana plantation must never be repeated.
Government is not about ideology to the exclusion of other considerations. For goodness’ sake, Margaret Thatcher knew that.
It wasn’t until Nigel Lawson quit and she made the fatal error of dumping on Sir Geoffrey Howe that the wheels came off for her. And neither of those former Chancellors could be described as wet lefties.
Once ideology took over, and clever people with clever ideas started tinkering with government policy, Margaret Thatcher was doomed.
The Thatcher legend – written by sycophants and assorted arse kissers after she tumbled from power – does not even have the quality of incomplete history.
It’s a lie. A myth.
Thatcher trimmed her sails, reacted cautiously to domestic pressures, and never jumped too far ahead of the reality of having to win elections.
Liz Truss managed to skip a decade of government and compressed the events preceding Thatcher’s fall into 44 days.
Shambolic is too kind for what happened during Liz Truss’s tenure in power.
God alone knows what mandate she imagined she had to cut taxes and massively increase spending while expecting the magic of the markets to somehow pay for her largesse.
It was the politics of the madhouse. More precisely, it’s the politics of 80,000 Conservative Party members who live in ideological la-la-land.
Before you make massive structural changes to the economy, it must be stable, and people must buy into the need for radical change.
The UK’s economy undoubtedly needs a massive structural overhaul.
To try doing so during an economic crisis was crackers.
The past seven weeks – if nothing else – strengthened the argument that a party leader must command the parliamentary majority and not party members’ votes.
There’s a very sound reason for that: members of any political party tend to cleave to ideology over pragmatism. MPs must govern pragmatically.
Once you allow ideology to overwhelm practicality, you end up with Jacob Rees Mogg and Jeremy Corbyn near the levers of power.
Monkeys, keys, plantation.
Bananas!
