Surreal week in Parliament this. No other word for it.
They brought a robot – Ai-Da – into Parliament to get grilled by a Lords Select Committee about artificial intelligence.
With jerky, almost lifelike movements, vacant eyes, flashes of rudimentary understanding, the Lords managed to ask it some decent questions. (Cheap, I know, but I can’t resist.)
Eventually, it fell asleep, having to be switched off and on again to bring it round. Maybe we should get it measured for robes. Fit right in.
By Friday lunch, things got stranger, as Kwasi Kwarteng became one of the shortest-lived Chancellors in history.
Hard to sympathise with him – of course – not the most disastrous tenures in the post there’s been. But it’s not good when someone is scapegoated like that.
Ms Truss signed this mini-budget off, of course, so I’m not sure what firing the Chancellor actually achieved other than removing the final human shield protecting the woman herself.
Jeremy Hunt – remember him? – is now in place, desperately trying to undo all the damage of the last few weeks.
Doubtful even that will save this PM, given the mood in Parliament. One Tory backbencher described it to me as “a circus, just an utter circus,” then paused and added: “If the circus was on fire.”
Some Tories give Ms Truss until Christmas, others until Halloween.
It seems unthinkable really, that it could be over so quickly.
But then, when you look at the car crash that has happened since Ms Truss took over, not really that unthinkable.
The form it's going to take is the interesting bit. The Tories – like the landlord in my local – are excellent at deciding when it’s time for you to go, and despite any protestations you might have about how you’ve got a grand economic plan to carry out, or how you’ve just put a quid in the quiz machine,
They are already getting ready. A “council of elders”, according to some sources, is preparing to deliver the bad news. But Ms Truss just needs to open the papers or turn on the TV to realise the game us up.
A surreal old week. No two ways about it. The question is what we do next.
If Truss does go, the ticket being touted – found right at the bottom at the barrel – is a Rishi Sunak/Penny Mourdant double. A hybrid, if you will.
The other option is Ben Wallace. I’m not sure, either.
Whoever it is, any argument against a fresh general election has got to go out of the window at this point.
As Labour say, the damage is already done and the only proper solution is a change of hands. There is no-one competent left in the Tory Party left to take over.
Unless – and this is a radical solution – we turn overseas for a remedy.
In Melbourne, scientists have grown a “mini-brain” in the lab.
They’ve already taught it to play 1970s computer game Pong and, in true Australian fashion, are planning – and I’m not making this up – to get it drunk.
Maybe though, before they start pouring Castlemaine XXXX all over their creation, we could have a lend of it.
It couldn’t do any worse than this lot.
If those Aussie scientists are reading this, find out which way it votes and stick it in the mail please.
Postcode is SW1A 2AA. It’ll do a better job than this lot and just about tide us over until, finally, it’s time to go to the polls.
