No.124 - Boris’s New Cabinet Splutters into Dysfunctional Incoherence.

Dear James,

It was all so embarrassing. It started on Monday with the press invited in to meet the new cabinet. There they all were, the grinning boss with his beaming new wunderkind, Rishi Sunak, at his side and the rest of the merry crew in respectful obeisance around the table. ‘How many new hospitals are we going to build?’ asked the Prime Minister. ‘Forty!’ cried the new crew. ‘How many more police officers are we recruiting?” ‘’Twenty Thousand’, they responded. It was the British version of a Beijing Politburo session. Or should that be a Monty Python version of a once serious approach to British politics? 

More red faces the next day when the government was forced to sack one of Mr Cummings’s new weirdo advisers, a so-called ‘super-forecaster’ named Andrew Sabisky. Even the right wing press found his comments about race, eugenics and forced sterilisation too much to stomach. But perhaps ‘red faces’ is a misnomer. Following the Trump rulebook, Boris failed to apologize. Apology for the populists is weakness and that would never do. Mr Cummings, when door stepped about the Sabisky affair, added another of his infamous and unintelligible quotes to his rapidly expanding confusicon.  Don’t ask! I have no idea!

Everyone now knows that Boris and Cummings follow Mr Trump’s lead.  Mr Trump is said to run his Presidency like a reality tv programme. This means that, when he makes new appointments, he does so on the basis of what they look like and not what their competences are. That’s one reason why, over a year ago, he sacked Steve Bannon, the US prototype for Mr Cummings. Bannon dressed like a down-and-out and had the vocabulary of someone far worse. Mr Cummings also has an unusual style of dress. Although he’s a little tidier than Bannon, he wears jeans, a hoody and an anorak. He’s the government punk, the nation’s bovver boy, the left behind’s middle finger to the establishment. The trouble is that he is trading on this wayward image as being ‘cool’ and in so doing is just a finger tip away from becoming a total joke. For the moment though, Boris is, under Cummings’s command, riding out the wave of ridicule. In Cummings’s brave new world, the mantra is, ‘Move left on economics, move right on culture’. And there it is. Boris will do the spending, Dominique will do the bovver boy stuff. 

Meanwhile in Brussels, Boris launched his own reality tv negotiator in the form of David Frost. Mr Frost has the appearance of a Hereford Bull which must put the fear of god into the EU side. He began his crusade predictably by charging at Mr Barnier with his demand for the ability to break free from the EU’s rulebook. "It is essential to the purpose of Brexit’, he said. “We bring to the negotiations not some clever tactical positioning but the fundamentals of what it means to be an independent country. It is central to our vision that we must have the ability to set laws that suit us – to claim the right that every other non-EU country in the world has.”  Well done, Mr. Frost. Little Britain stands up for its rights. The nation (or half of it) will be proud of you.

But perhaps the main news this week, was the first real policy roll-out of the new cabinet. On Wednesday Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, announced the brand new, points-based immigration policy designed to stop low-skilled workers entering the country. She tells us that we have 8.45 million “economically inactive” in our country who could plug the gaps left by the EU workers who have fled our land.  Unfortunately 27% of these ‘economically inactive' are students, 26% long-term sick, 22% at-home carers  and 13% early retirees. That leaves only very few ‘discouraged workers’ to fill all those care, hospitality and fruit pickers positions abandonned by our EU friends.

But talking about inactivity James, where has your leader been this week? We saw him clowning about on Monday but since then he seems to have joined the tribes of ‘the economically inactive’. He has certainly not been seen in the flooded valleys of the River Severn. Perhaps he’s lying on his bed in No10, being soothed by the reassuring caresses of his ‘super-forecaster-in-chief’?

But no need to be embarrassed, James. Dysfunctional incoherence has just become the new norm. 

Kind regards,

BH - Your Concerned Constituent