Rishi Sunak has finally admitted that 2024 will at last see the general election he’s been so furiously putting off. George Osborne reckons it will be on November 14, and it’s not like he’s been wrong about anything before.
Personally, I’ll believe it when I see it – if this government thinks it can make Rwanda a safe country simply by saying: “Rwanda is a safe country, everyone who agrees put your hands up,” it can surely stop a pesky election. But if and when it does come, the Tories face something else they’ve been avoiding: what to campaign on?
This has been thrown into sharp relief by the ongoing fallout from ITV’s Mr Bates vs the Post Office. While it would not be fair to lay the blame for the whole scandal at the feet of the current government given that it started all the way back in the early years of the Blair era, there are a few awkward questions it does need to address: why was former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells awarded a CBE in 2019? Why has Fujitsu UK continued to secure hugely remunerative government contracts? Etc.
The government’s press allies have decided the best way to help them dodge these questions is to tell the public that it was all Keir Starmer’s fault. Specifically that as head of the CPS, he failed to throw out the Post Office’s prosecutions of postmasters, overlooking the fact that the Post Office conducts its own prosecutions without involving the CPS.
This, it’s now apparent, is the government’s election slogan: NOTHING IS OUR FAULT. Yes, we’ve been in power for 14 years, but literally everything that’s gone wrong – and “literally everything” HAS gone wrong – has been down to someone else. So, at the risk of giving them ideas, here are some more government excuses for scandals and disasters…
THE COST OF LIVING CRISIS is the fault of MATHS
For far too long now, mathematics has maintained a lofty, aloof, elitist refusal to get with the programme of fearless Conservative reform and innovation. And while it was obvious to anyone with anything over an abacus level of arithmetical understanding that cutting £48bn’s worth of tax without bothering to even contemplate a way of making up the shortfall in the national exchequer would make the economy sink faster than the USS Indianapolis, it felt right to Kwasi Kwarteng and his fellow glassy-eyed Tufton St acolytes, and in their brave new world, if it feels right, it IS right.
So come on, maths! Get down off your ivory tower and embrace the new (un)reality!
PARTYGATE was JESUS’S fault for BEING BORN
While it wasn’t easy to look at all those photos and videos of Tory minions guffawing and cavorting amid the empty Chablis bottles and scattered canapés, knowing that at the time we, like our fellow responsible citizens were cloistered alone and/or mourning our dead, it’s important to remember that none of this would have happened if that notorious cross-dressing woke lefty do-gooder so-called Messiah “Jesus” hadn’t chosen to incarnate and subsequently sacrifice himself for all our sins.
If it weren’t for his reckless act of self-publicity, the otherwise blameless partygaters wouldn’t have had to spend December 2020 pissing it up in honour of his birthday. Subsequent No 10 parties up to April 2021, when the stories broke, were mere aftershocks.
THE SMALL BOATS CRISIS is the fault of EVERYWHERE ELSE for BEING RUBBISH
While the government has no intention of “stopping the boats” given that were the boats to stop, they’d have no campaigning platforms left at all, it’s important to look at the real cause of the problem.
It is in no way Britain’s fault that the rest of the world is so blighted with wars, famine and disasters (at least it isn’t if you completely ignore all of history from about 1700 onwards), so while the government could start doing things like reopening the safe routes for asylum seekers and actually processing their claims, the blame really does lie with all those other countries for being so ghastly.
This in turn explains all the government’s other policies: only by pursuing a wide-ranging programme of Levelling Down will we reduce the average Brit’s quality of life to so wretched a standard that even the most desperate refugees won’t bother trying to get here. It’s going pretty well so far…
THE SEWAGE SCANDAL is THE BRITISH PEOPLE’S fault for POOING TOO MUCH
We’ve all watched, nauseated, as our rivers and coasts have been deluged with millions of tons of untreated sewage. While it is true (if not often discussed) that this is largely down to Brexit having made the chemicals that we used to treat the sewage with prohibitively expensive, and the government, rather than entertain the blasphemous notion that Brexit might not have been the answer to all our prayers, simply dumping (sorry) the safety standards that protected our waterways, surely the real question is; where is all this sewage coming from?
From YOU, that’s where. Every day, you and millions of other thoughtless layabout are merrily squatting over your toilets and recklessly purging yourselves without giving a single thought as to where all that unpleasantness is going to.
Well it’s time we put a stop to it. Constipation For The Nation, that’s the new slogan. Lay off the curry. No more prunes. Put a cork in it or if you simply MUST defecate, dig a hole in the garden (remember: Tories think everyone has a garden) and do it in there like in the good old days. Maybe not a bad idea given that if the Tories get back in we’ll all be desperately trying to grow our own veg.
POEM (WELL, IT’S MORE OF A LIMERICK, REALLY) OF THE WEEK
The Tories still cling to Rwanda
As to racists they desperately pander
But it’s all such a mess
That even the press
Have stopped using it as propaganda
