I have just had a very troubling experience. I watched Mandy on Marr and apart from his predictable, smug, gastropodic arrogance tended to agree with him. And then was the unsettling experience of watching our esteemed Secretary of State for Justice and Lord High Chancellor, Liz Truss, staring like a rabbit in the headlights before being turned into ministerial roadkill by the Marr Ford Transit van. I am still in therapy as I have never seen her in action before. It’s like watching the principal boy in Aladdin failing an audition for the Halifax advert. That probably explains why she is so wishy washy. And the voice is so weird. I can’t work out whether it is posh trying to do mockney or estuary trying to become a tinkling stream of Home Counties. At least Emily Thornberry, a woman so aloof that she needs an oxygen mask, has the bearing of master of the hunt willing to give those common little sabs a damn good thrashing for their impertinence. But Truss? The poor thing looked terrified of being thrown soft balls by far the nicest man in broadcasting. If it had been Andrew Neil she would have probably shat herself and done a Basil Fawlty by pretending to faint.
And who on earth briefed her? Basil Brush? The questions were proceeded by bells, klaxons and flashing red lights. Surely she should have prepared a snappy little answer to, ‘you have a statutory duty to protect the judiciary, and you have been slagged off by the President of the Supreme Court and a former Lord Chief Justice for having the moral fibre of Bambi. Have you learned from your experience of shoving your head so far up Paul Dacre’s arse that Downing Street had to train a team of sniffer dogs to remove it?’ All that she could muster was that she would never attack newspapers for what they write. Never? When the MAIL called three High Court judges Enemies of the People? When that bloody Captain Mainwearing of the backbenches, IDS, is reported as saying that British Judges should be selected by politicians? And those were her finest moments. Her answers to the fact that our prisons have become unsafe, riddled with drugs and sometimes controlled by thugs was intriguing. She was going to ‘digitise’ it. Someone please tell me what the fuck that means. What she would have said was that that low grade tosser Grayling had cut prison officer numbers and we are now reaping the whirlwind. Anyhow enough of Truss. It is just too depressing.
But Truss is just representative of a government where so many of its senior ministers are barely adequate. Policy making, as it is whimsically called, nowadays fits into a pattern. A bold announcement is made. Back benchers parrot its success. Back benchers then realise that it is a toxic turkey that is going to cause hardship to their constituents. Back benchers call for reform. The government stands firm. Backbenchers threaten to revolt. The government says that the policy is right in principle but will think again. There is then a U turn. The latest example of this is the revaluation of business rates. Again this was proceeded by klaxons, flashing lights, men with hoods and scythes and chap with a white flowing beard coming down from a mountain with a tablet of stone engraved, ‘are you fucking mad?’
Why don’t these jokers think before they make policy?
