“LATE TO THE PARTY AS USUAL” OF THE WEEK
I don’t watch a lot of TV in general and I’m a bit of an old curmudgeon where “crazes” are concerned, but as BBC1’s The Traitors is becoming something of a pop culture phenomenon in its second series, I decided to see what all the fuss is about.
It’s a not uninteresting spin on some fairly standard reality/game show tropes, I guess, but given that the format consists of a gaggle of self-obsessed squawking idiots being cloistered in a stately old building, therein ostensibly to cooperate on achieving various tasks while secretly plotting murderously against each other, I think the current iteration of the Conservative Party might well have grounds to sue the show’s creators for plagiarism.
“OMG THEY REALLY *ARE* THAT STUPID” MOMENT OF THE WEEK
Our imploding government’s insane determination to die on the freezing, barren legislative hill that is the Rwanda programme is generating a vortex of sheer stupidity that is at once horrifying and utterly compelling.
Last week in the House of Commons, Thérèse Coffey sought to mock Labour’s Yvette Cooper for referring to the “Kigali government” when the country in question isn’t called “Kigali” but “Rwanda”. This was followed by a hubbub of embarrassed murmurs from the government benches (and the sound of jaws dropping throughout the land) as it dawned on everyone that Ms Coffey genuinely didn’t know that Kigali was the capital city of Rwanda, and that our government is literally tearing itself apart over efforts to remove an insignificant number of asylum seekers to a country that even its own front bench knows nothing about.
It’s worth noting that for a short while in 2022 Ms Coffey was the actual no-really deputy prime minister of this country, although it’s also worth noting that the prime minister to whom she was deputy was Liz “Disas” Truss. The tomato to her lettuce, if you will.
TOYS-LEAVING-PRAM MOMENT OF THE WEEK
And so, the reign of deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and Person That Most Tories Think All Northerners Are Like, Lee Anderson, came to a dignified end when, having resigned his post over what he evidently regarded as the toothless inadequacy of the Rwanda bill, he abandoned his effort to vote against it when he noticed that Labour MPs waiting in the “No” lobby were, in his own words, “sniggling” at him.
He announced this, of course, in an exclusive interview on GammonBall News, the “news” channel that has been employing him as a presenter and commentator for his entire tenure as Tory deputy chairman, to the evident lack of interest of Ofcom (but the TV news media is a HOTBED OF COMMUNISM, folks, and don’t you forget it).
Even if he’s achieved nothing else (spoiler alert: he hasn’t), at least Lee Anderthal invented a new word on his way out. This then, is how his front bench career ends: not with a bang, but with a sniggle.
PUTTING TOYS BACK IN PRAM AND PROMISING TO BE A GOOD BOY MOMENT OF THE WEEK
Mr Anderthal’s fellow deputy chairman, Brendan Clarke-Something, having similarly resigned because he couldn’t possibly vote for the Rwanda bill in its present form, then voted for the Rwanda bill in its present form, so that was worthwhile.
Incidentally, just before Christmas, I briefly found myself in the same pub as the surprisingly short Mr Clarke-Something; he and the unsurprisingly short Mark François were guffawing loudly, so it’s good to see that the state of the nation isn’t getting them down.
WHILE WE’RE HERE…
…it’s worth remembering that the Rwanda “initiative” was never supposed to actually happen. The only reason it’s being clung to now is that Rishi Sunak needed to win over Suella Braverman and her ultras in order to secure the Tory leadership. She’s now gone, of course, but the colours had been nailed to the Rwanda mast and there they must, it seems, remain.
So now we have a failing economy and a collapsing social framework, and a government that’s ignoring all of this in order to enact a policy which, even if it happens (it won’t), and even if it works exactly as planned (it couldn’t) would barely even scratch the surface of our deliberately neglected refugee crisis and do nothing whatsoever to “stop the boats”, given that it’s founded on an insoluble contradiction: that Rwanda is simultaneously a safe haven for asylum seekers AND such a perilous craphole that the mere mention of its name is enough to deter all comers.
Not a lot of jokes in that bit, folks, sorry.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Trump is slowly dissolving
Collapsing before our eyes
Corroded slowly from within
By bitterness and lies
His orange face is melting
And so’s his orange brain
After 80 years of hate and rage
It just can’t take the strain
Trump is slowly dissolving
He droops towards the floor
His skin no longer wants to be
Stuck to him any more
Trump is liquefying
But if he can last till then
This time next year he’ll probably
Be president again
