Recent events have made it feel as if we have moved into a scary alternative reality.
But if Covid shutting down the world and Russia launching a full-scale European war made us wonder if life had become one long bad dream, it was surely nothing compared to seeing Liz Truss installed as runaway favourite to be the next British Prime Minister.
How in God’s name is it possible for this talent and charisma vacuum to be deemed the one person, out of a population of 68.6 million, to lead Britain through these troubled times?
She looks like a graveyard shift shopping channel presenter and sounds like the Speaking Clock on mogadon. She’s being styled as the Boris Johnson Continuity Candidate, as though carrying on the chaos induced by a disgraced, incompetent liar is somehow a plus.
The latest testimony to her unrivalled brilliance is her “willingness to challenge the status quo”. Which means spouting uncosted pledges guaranteed to hit the G-spots of ageing right-wing Tory members, hoping they see her as one of them.
Vote for Liz and she’ll cut taxes, send more immigrants to Rwanda, bin the net-zero target, create more grammar schools, crush the unions, silence the trans lobby, end Whitehall waste, introduce fracking, make more arrests, reverse the NI rise, end the jail threat over BBC licences and anything else that tickles your self-serving fancy.
She’s throwing more red meat at them than a safari park lion keeper, ticking every box on the Tory List Of Pet Hates except for a pledge to build internment camps for vegans, cyclists and teachers. Although there’s still time for that one.
Her cunning plan to halt Scottish independence is to ignore Nicola Sturgeon because “she’s an attention seeker”.
This from a shameless opportunist who’s organised more cynical photo-ops than the Beckhams.
Someone who plagiarised a policy paper from the far-right pressure group Taxpayers’ Alliance to cut the pay of civil servants living outside London, was slaughtered and did a swift U-turn. But there was nothing new in her ripping off the ideas of others as trade department officials nicknamed her “Ctrl C + Ctrl V”, due to her copy-and-pasting deals already in place with the EU.
She’s like one of those spooky, dead-eyed talking dolls that recite basic phrases when they are wound up. Phrases like: “I’ll unleash British farming”. But what does that mean? Opening paddocks and letting the bulls out? Letting standards drop so low Mad Cow disease is all the rage again?
She lies about her school being a bog-standard comprehensive when it was outstanding, doesn’t know the Black Sea from the Baltic, believes barking dogs in jails will stop drones dropping drugs, thinks the leader of our closest ally, Ireland, is a Tea Sock, co-wrote a book which claimed the “British are among the worst idlers in the world” and her most famous speech to date is about the disgrace of cheese imports.
But none of those Tories who are deluding themselves that she is Thatcher reborn, are asking why someone who sounds thicker than a Highland cow-pat, was so recently a Lib-Dem, was a staunch Remainer and a Republican who wanted to abolish the monarchy, has any credibility.
I hope this bad dream becomes reality. Because even for such an uninspiring Labour leadership, beating this dead-eyed talking doll will be child’s play.
