The Conservatives have always put a lot of time and effort into making sure they’re as insulated as possible from reality. Facts are, after all, just for the little people.
It’s now two years since the last time they were on terms with Labour in the polls, and Keir Starmer’s lead has rarely dipped below 20 points for most of that time. Nonetheless, the administration and its spokesthings have carefully trained their brains to ignore all such tiresome information. Until the last few weeks, when these two factoids appear to have broken through:
1) There IS, natural disasters and world wars notwithstanding (Don’t give them any ideas – Ed), going to be a general election in the next 12 months.
2) This election will result in them suffering the kind of annihilation that would make the Battle of the Little Bighorn look like a draw.
As such, with the national interest uppermost in their thoughts as always, the Tories are spending what will almost certainly be their last months in office paying no attention to the economic meltdown engulfing the UK, but rather engaged in the vital work of blaming each other, blaming the opposition, blaming the media, blaming the ungrateful electorate and re-convening their now familiar circular firing squad.
The one thing all this intrigue and subterfuge is making painfully clear is that the Conservatives have no idea WHY they’re stuck 20 points behind Sir Keir “Interesting” Starmer’s Labour. Instead, they think they’re losing because of all this…
THE WOKEYS HAVE KILLED THEIR RWANDA DREAM
The Rwanda “initiative” was always an exercise in pure dead cattery, which not only couldn’t work but was never supposed to work – and even if it DID work, wouldn’t stop a single boat or do anything to scratch the surface of the UK’s asylum-seeker backlog. Yet the Tories have managed to Winston Smith their own heads to the point at which not only do they seem to believe it’s essential, but are equally convinced that the rest of us believe this too, and will instantly forgive them for over a decade of hardship and turmoil if we can just see a dozen or so weeping Albanians get bundled on to a plane.
Where are they getting this idea, when every poll and even the “filtered for maximum Brexitiness” Question Time studio audience is denouncing it as profligate lunacy? Are they actually asking any members of the public, or just doing that thing Lee Anderson used to do when he knocked on his mate’s door and PRETENDED to be consulting a random voter?
THEY JUST NEED ANOTHER NEW LEADER
In fairness, the Tories do have a rather Machiavellian knack for, when the public are losing patience with them, replacing a few faces at the top, giving the party a bit of a rebrand and then essentially running in opposition to themselves, but nobody except Simon Clarke, whoever he is, seriously thinks that’ll work again so soon.
Besides, who is there to choose from this time? Aside from Simon Clarke, of course (perhaps that was the idea).
THEY’RE NOT BEING CONSERVATIVE *ENOUGH*
What happens when a cult mentality takes hold of a movement (as it did in the parliamentary Conservative Party in 2019 when Boris Johnson purged it of everyone with either a shred of integrity or an IQ higher than their inside leg measurement) and the leaders’ prophecies inevitably fail to come to pass (the Rapture doesn’t happen AGAIN/the flying saucers don’t come to take the faithful away/Brexit doesn’t make us all rich)?
The problem is NEVER that the leaders are frauds and their prophecies mumbo jumbo; heavens no, the problem is that the faithful didn’t believe strongly ENOUGH.
So it is with the Tories just now: Brexit is crippling the country because it was a Remainer-poisoned quasi-Brexit and not a REAL Brexit; the Rwanda bill is going nowhere because it only kicks out asylum seekers, not foreigners in general; there weren’t ENOUGH unfunded tax cuts in the last couple of budgets; the poor and hungry aren’t poor or hungry ENOUGH; we’re not cracking down hard ENOUGH on the trans kids and all the other misfits…
When Labour does this sort of thing and gets wiped out accordingly, it generally responds by patting itself on the back for remaining true to its core principles and declaring that it “won the argument”. One doubts the Tories will take any similar comfort. If they’re not winners, they’re nothing.
WHY THE CONSERVATIVES ARE ACTUALLY LOSING:
Because they bloody deserve to lose.
POEM OF THE WEEK
They’ll be snooping on your bank account
The DWP
If you’re in receipt of benefits
Or sick, or OAP
They think you might be on the make
They think you might be crooks
So they’ll hack into your bank accounts
To have a little look
Not if you’re a multinational
Or you’re a billionaire
Or a non-domiciled resident
Getting tax breaks without care
Just if you’re broke or disabled
Retired or signing on
Into your greedy pockets
That’s where all the money’s gone
They’ll be snooping on your bank accounts
To see what funds you’ve hid
At a cost to the exchequer
Of 400 million quid
But it’s worth every bit of it
We’re sure you see that’s true
To see no scrounger gets a penny more
Then they’re entitled to.
