The sound of silence. After more than a decade of Tory governments, many of us had become inured to the chaos. We had come to think of dysfunction as routine. Incompetence, stupidity, corruption, narcissism were a steady background noise. Just a normal working week.
So it’s come as something of a surprise to find that just a few days into the autumn term, not much appears to be going on in Westminster. No sound, no fury. Just people quietly going about their business. Politics as it used to be. Politics as it is meant to be. So much so that now even the Tories have come to think that the Tories are a bit weird. People are genuinely asking themselves how they could ever have imagined voting for them.
Weirdness is the Tories’ current USP. Something many of their MPs actively cherish. It’s their last remaining identifiable trait. Without it, they fear they would be nothing. Just bits of jetsam tossed overboard as the party sunk without trace on 4 July. They think that being weird makes them look interesting. Edgy, even. It doesn’t of course. It just makes them look weird.
You might have thought the near-death experience at the election would have jolted at least some of them back to reality. Given them pause for thought. A chance to reflect on why most of the country rejected them. Instead they retreated into their own bunker. Embraced their inner weirdness.
So much so that the inner became outer. The Tories decided that their offer to the country had been sound. That the economy had been in fine health. It wasn’t them who had got things wrong. It was the electorate who had screwed up. All the Tories had to do was sit tight and wait for the country to come to its senses.
Weirder still is the fact that the Tories don’t even realise that to every sensible person, they are now an irrelevance. They believe their leadership contest is front and centre of everyone’s attention. They have no idea that almost no one is bothered who becomes the next Tory leader. Because whoever it eventually is, it will still be one of the halfwits who helped to bring the country to its knees. And in any case is a racing certainty never to find their way into No 10.
So the leadership contenders continue to do weird. On Thursday lunchtime, Priti Patel could be found striding down the corridors of parliament with a face like thunder. Still unable to believe that in a sextet of deadbeats, she was the deadest beat of all. The first to be knocked out of the contest. She should have been amazed that as many as 14 Tory MPs voted for her. Who are these people that reckon the Pritster is fit to lead? Hell, we’re not even talking about her breaches of the ministerial code. We’re talking about her abject uselessness.
Still, one person was pleased to see her go. Step forward, Robert Jenrick, who reckons he is the one most likely to hoover up the 14 votes going spare. Honest Bob’s hot take was that Priti Vacant’s first-round exit was a sign that her mission to change the party was the nation’s prime objective. Er, hello. Earth to Bob. Earth to Bob. You do know that she lost? That rather means her rightwing agenda was rejected.
Not to Honest Bob. He lives in a world of populist dialectics. Where to lose is to win. Where the more people dislike you, the more popular you are. It’s as if his recent dabbling with Ozempic has thinned out his intelligence as well as his physique. He’s forgotten that the brain is also a muscle. Assuming he ever knew. Weirder still, after Jenrick’s idiotic tweets about Vacant, he is now the bookies’ favourite to become leader. The man who did a £50m planning favour to the Tory donor and pornographer Dirty Des. It takes all sorts.
It also seems that some of the weirdness has rubbed off on the Lords, some of whom are up in arms that Labour is planning to get rid of all 92 hereditary peers. Hardly unreasonable, and there is bound to be a fudge, allowing a handful of the able – breathing – hereditaries to sneak back in as life peers. Only in the UK could someone be allowed to become a peer twice over with no loss of hereditary benefits. Never say that the establishment doesn’t look after its own.
But Lord Strathclyde was apoplectic on Thursday, insisting that the government was completely out of order. It just wasn’t on to think of forcibly retiring 92 white Tory men. The very idea. This just wasn’t cricket. What would their lordships do now? And it was outrageous that Labour was trying to appoint more of its own chums. It was always thus. Fine for a Tory government to have as many Tory peers as it likes. That’s the way of the world. Just not the other way round.
Obviously there was no sign of David Cameron in the chamber. Lord Big Dave is choosing to lie low. Very wise. It goes without saying that he will come away untouched from the Grenfell fire report. Even though it was his bonfire of red tape that paved the way for a laissez-faire approach to safety in social housing. Eric Pickles was just his useful idiot. But Dave will get away unscathed. No censure. Because men like Dave always do. They lead a charmed life. But perhaps it’s best if he doesn’t draw too much attention to himself for a few weeks.
Still, there was some joy to be found on the estate on Thursday. While most cabinet ministers are doing their best not to panic about the public’s reaction to cutting the winter fuel allowance – a U-turn/fudge is only a matter of days away – Ed Miliband is living his best life. The disappointment of his time as leader is now ancient history. He’s loving being a cabinet minister. The sense of real power.
On Thursday he was in the Commons for the second reading of his Great British Energy bill. And it was pure theatre of dreams. Almost pantomime. Laughs, passion. No persuasion necessary. The Tories aren’t an opposition. Just punchlines for his gags. No wonder the Conservative benches were almost empty. Ed almost made governing look fun. He clearly hasn’t got the memo. Keir Starmer will soon be having a word.
