EITHERn Tuesday, Grant Shapps managed remove Boris Johnson from a photo Taken in an aircraft hangar. There is no surprise there. Rishi Sunak has been doing everything he can to root Boris out of the Tory party. And The Convict has been working around the clock to destroy any evidence of his partying during lockdown. What goes around comes around.
Wednesday arrived, the agile Shapps had cleared himself from the prime minister’s questions to go quickly to the Middle East. After receiving criticism over the government’s senseless new strike laws in the House of Commons the day before, he felt a break was due. Time to distance yourself from the crime scene. Maybe I’ll be back in a week or two when the strikes have settled. Or not.
If only Rish! he could have done the same. He must have come to hate his weekly appearance before the Commons by now. There just isn’t a good story for him to tell. Hopeless. Just a sad story of a country in decline. Not even a controlled descent at that. Now it seems that we are in a tailspin. Heading to the ground at top speed. Nothing works. The transportation system is in chaos. The health service is in crisis. Not good news in sight. And somehow, Sunak has to keep smiling and pretend everything is going smoothly.
It’s a fucking hand. Even Johnson, with his lying swagger, would have a hard time getting out of there. But Rish! it’s more and more of a sitting duck. A not very capable politician who fails in high risk politics. Sinking deeper and deeper into the mud. Soon, all that will be visible of him will be a head and an arm. Not waving but drowning.
To be fair, he’s doing the best he can. And on Wednesday, he was near the top of his game. But his best is not good enough. His deputies did everything possible to cheer him up. Willing for him to succeed. But it’s like cheering on the defender who has already fallen and knocked down his rider. they know it. More importantly, Rish! he knows it. Even when his parliamentarians fall into overly theatrical applause, he hardly recognizes them. There is no relationship. Without connection. He is from another world. Lost in his own private hell.
Things got off to a rocky start when Cat Smith, from Labor, asked how long she had to wait for an NHS dentist. In the past, Sunak has refused to commit to the details of his own medical care. Not for public consumption. He now he chose to confess. After a fashion He was now registered with an NHS doctor. Wow! Man of the people! The Messiah came down to live among us. He did not say when he registered. Or if he had ever bothered to use the NHS service. It’s much easier to make a quick call, and communicate, and use his credit card. Once he had learned to use it. This tapping was a bit modern.
Rish! followed. Yes. She had used ‘independent’ healthcare. She didn’t dare use the word ‘private’. so vulgar Once again, the details were deliberately kept vague. Was she still using private medicine? Would you use private medicine at some point in the future? More questions than answers. He ended by saying that he was proud to have come from a National Health Service family.
Eh yes. But would his NHS family be proud of what he’s done to the NHS? Would his mom and dad be delighted that he had gone to war with the health unions when the service was falling apart and there were more than 1,000 deaths a week? Maybe not.
Keir Starmer kept hitting the bruise. When he’d applauded the nurses, he’d meant it. Sunak wanted to see them off. In the 13 years of Labor rule between 1997 and 2010 there have been no strikes. The NHS had prospered. Covid was also not the “get out” escape clause that Sunak wanted it to be. In the 10 years between 2010 and 2020 when no one had heard of Covid…
“Or you,” shouted Tory MP Jonathan Gullis.
For some reason this sent some Tory MPs into hysterics. No one could explain why. It wasn’t that fun. It certainly wasn’t that smart. So no one had heard of Starmer. They hadn’t heard of Sunak either. Or Gullis. The latest unbranded brand.
Yes, but… Rish! she desperately tried to regain the high ground. Failing, failing, failing. Er, Labor was too close to the unions. Not exactly the killer line, given that most people in the country side with nurses and ambulance drivers. Does the PM somehow believe there is any moral purpose in refusing to negotiate with the nurses and prolonging the strikes? It certainly looks that way.
And another thing, said Sunak. The workers must be trying to kill patients by not supporting the government’s anti-strike legislation. Okay then. In which case, Sunak’s own shock assessment must be on a mission of death. Because he concluded that the laws would be a disaster and more likely to cause more strikes. And it wasn’t as if the health service was any safer on days when NHS staff weren’t taking industrial action.
Sunak went for the wind. Waiting lists were now less than two years. Wow! Thanks for nothing. Not really something to brag about. “The job has run out of other people’s money,” he concluded. Shiny. The Tories actually wasted billions on unusable PPE. And then there was Liz Truss, who single-handedly spent £45bn in seven weeks and raised everyone’s mortgages. In the same period, Labor hasn’t spent a dime. One day, the Conservatives might realize that they have been in government for the last 13 years and have no one to blame but themselves.
The rest of the session was something of an anticlimax. Theresa May seemed a little uncomfortable when Scottish National Party leader Stephen Flynn brought up former Tory leaders coining him on the lecture circuit when nurses went to food banks. And Matt Hancock, wearing his trademark lucky pink tie, asked if the Tory party should be awarded a medal for unwhipping the already suspended Andrew Bridgen for his anti-vaccine tweet. The wonder is how Bridgen became an MP in the first place. He takes all kinds.
Rish! skated on it. Your own crash history doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny. Although now he himself has much more to think about. He slipped away from the chamber. He won’t see each other again until the same time next week. If he was lucky. The submarine PM.
