No.235 - The Grown Ups are Back in Charge - So Everything’s Alright Then?

 Dear James.

It was a bit like sitting in front of a washing machine as the same old tired and worn out characters went round and round, churning and re-churning in the hope of achieving that elusive freshness of which every 1950s housewife used to dream. Boris’s ‘cabinet reshuffle’ this week will do little to revive his fortunes. The stains persist. The smell of chaos and corruption is locked into the fabric. The same old people are taken out, held up to the light and put back for the next cycle. Again and again. Over and over. And nothing changes. The same old tired Brexiteers are there. Each wash removes more colour, each churn frays the cuffs further, each spin flattens the collars to their one dimensional iterations of long lost triumph. The powder that removes all dirt and all stains remains to be invented. 

Your Party James, of course, span it a different way. On Monday morning we were told, ’The grown ups are back in charge’. The riot is over. The Borstal is back in the hands of its responsible staff. The Lord of the Flies has been tossed aside. Thank goodness for that. We can all breath easily once again.

First to be announced was Steve Barclay. The man, with the head of a grey sloth, slid down his long branch and landed up as the new Downing Street, Chief of Staff with the brief to instil discipline into the toddler’s playpen.  Then came, Guto Harri, the new Communications Director. Together, we were told, they would tame the beast. Unfortunately, the person who told us that was the beast himself, Boris Johnson. 

It didn’t get off to a good start. In his first interview since taking over as the Director of Communications, Guto Harri, In answer to a question from journalists, announced that, ‘The Prime Minister is not a complete clown but he is a very likeable character.” When Harri invited him to speculate on his future, the Prime Minister had delivered his rendition of “I Will Survive”. Just to reassure us, Harri said that after “a lot of laughing” the pair had “a serious conversation about how we get the government back on track and how we move forward.” Get the message? Governing is about fun, being liked and enjoying the conviviality of like minded compatriots. All clearly prime pre-qualifications for the leader of a once proud nation! 

Yesterday, the reshuffle continued. Rees-Mogg, he who once notoriously draped his languid frame across the front bench in the posture of a Roman ‘magister’, moved from being ‘Leader of Yesteryear and the House’ to Minister in Charge of Brexit Opportunities. I guess dear, loveable, Jacob’s going to be busy with that one! But seriously, who thinks these titles up? 

James, none of the above will make a blind bit of difference to the future of your party because the one man who needed reshuffling is still there. Stripped now of the faintest hint of integrity or honesty, the beast is now fighting for his political life. Any last pretence of values and principles are now cast aside by the sheer need to survive. Boris Johnson will do anything, say anything, to avoid the hangman.

Which of course is what he did last week when, in an onset of cornered rage, he accused the Leader of the Opposition of failing to prosecute Jimmy Saville when he was Director of Public Prosecutions. Even the more principled members of your Party were outraged. His subsequent refusal to apologise confirms him as small,  weak and fragile.  

So the latest episode of our nation’s nightmare continues. Sue Gray’s Final Report on ‘Partygate’ will soon be published and the real damage being done by Brexit is gradually being  revealed. But fear not James, our brand new, repackaged, rebranded Jacob Rees-Mogg will swoop down from his new Ministry in charge of Brexit Opportunities to be on hand to save the day! 

I’ve given up on the washing machine James. I’m going to watch Coronation Street instead! 

 BH - Your Concerned Constituent 

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