I suppose I shouldn’t be too shocked that the likes of Cruddas, Dorries and an asylum of Conservative Party members are still talking up the chances of Johnson triumphantly returning to Number 10. It is, of course, delusional but par for the course. Many years ago he lectured students on how to get on in politics, ‘even if you speak like Cicero you will never get electoral success without first grasping and mastering the principles of hacking. Assemble a disciplined deluded collection of stooges to get out the vote….the tragedy of the stooge is that….he wants so much to believe that his relationship with the candidate is special that he shuts out the truth. The terrible art of the candidate is coddle the self deception of the stooge’. Watching the Dorries interview, admittedly behind an upturned armchair & a bottle of gin, I actually began to feel rather sorry for the old girl. Her large watery eyes were that of a faithful Labrador who worships her master. It was all rather sad.
Yet on the stooges drone. The latest line is that there will be a coup after some dreadful local elections results. Really? Get a grip. Everyone who touches Johnson gets burned. Most recent collateral damage is Zahawi and BBC Chair Richard Sharp. I suspect that he will be gone by tomorrow. Certainly by PMQs on Wednesday. Raab is hanging on by a thread and Cruella gets more floridly psychotic by the day. And we haven’t even had the Privileges Committee report yet. The only place Johnson is going is to the bank. But it won’t stop him or his stooges kicking Sunak in the ballots at every opportunity.
Now Liz Truss has broken her silence. Firstly, with four thousand words (some were even different) in the Sunday Telegraph and then a television interview with the Spectator. I felt rather sorry for Fraser Nelson who looked on in utter bewilderment at her answers. Deep down he must have been asking himself how this bat shit crazy weirdo ever got into the cabinet let alone Number 10. On she stumbled blaming everyone, from the Bank of England, the OBR and her hopeless Chancellor, but never herself. The new narrative is that nobody had warned her what the markets would do. Did she ever listen to Sunak? Of course not.
And now there is the appointment of Lee Anderson, the sort of Tory that Labour would have to invent if he didn’t exist, in full bollock clenching awfulness. I don’t sneer at him. He isn’t stupid. He knows exactly what he is doing and whom he is targeting. I just think that he represents a dying minority of voters with 1950s views. He really is the sort of fellow you should lock in the attic at election time not put him on the telly. Now he is the gift that keeps on giving for Labour, the doyenne of the mad right and pure slapstick for the tabloids. I have absolutely no idea why Sunak appointed him. Obviously the whips advised as nobody gives a damn about party appointments. But what do they think he will achieve apart from revolting vast swathes of floating voters?
But there is a little slither of light at the end of the tunnel which might not be the train. Whatever you might think of Tony Blair he has a fine political antenna. He has warned Starmer that unless he denounces the left he won’t win the election. Some chance of that.