Not so much speech, rather pointless walking. An extended trailer for speeches that may deliver on some – yet undefined – future dates, along with some small announcements about things that will almost certainly never happen. Politics at its best.
Boris Johnson works on vapors. Monty Python’s Black Knight is trying to convince himself and the people around him that he has suffered minor bodily injuries when everyone can see that it is a fatally damaged commodity. So on Thursday, the Convict went to Blackpool and Fylde College – the closest to leveling these days is the Strange Day in the Northwest – where he tried to convince himself that there was a future. According to today’s evidence, those 211 lawmakers who stood by him in a no-confidence vote on Monday will wonder why they were worried.
It was a grim job. Grotesque even. The desperation to try to talk about something other than Partygate only revealed the poverty of the prime minister’s ambition and achievements. Significantly, the only concrete proposals he makes and implements – on refugees in Rwanda and changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol – involve breaking the law.
Johnson began by saying that things were not as bad as in the 1950s, when rations were introduced and life expectancy lower. He knocked hard on the podium, as if annoyed that his audience was no more grateful.
He then turned to Ukraine and rising energy costs. They were out of his control, so no one should blame him for not doing much. But he would do more at some point. Just not now. Because now was not the time. He knew people were already struggling with the cost of living, but they would just have to keep up the good work until he figured out what to do. But if there was any consolation, it was a global problem, so people could take comfort in dying in company.
The convict looked up to see if anyone else was listening. Or following. Because it didn’t seem to be, because there were a few moments when he either lost his place or began to fall apart. One time he was talking about investing in the NHS, and the next he was talking about not having money for anything. His was a tax-cutting government, he lied, even though it had imposed the highest tax burden since the 1940s. But everything would be fine, because he would further reduce the civil service. Since all the apartments were broken, there would be no need to hire staff at the Passport Office, as no one would go abroad.
It was as if Johnson was on autopilot. He was just making his way through a selection of issues that had clogged his tray for the past few months. People should not expect higher wages because it just fuels inflation, so people should just eat a little less until things get back to normal.
Which would soon be because of Brexit. Leaving the EU has had countless benefits. So much so that he couldn’t remember what they were. Now he is openly trolling farmers, wondering why they are not doing more to produce British food. Well … because all the EU workers who were willing to do low-paid work went home.
At this point, at least 20 minutes after a speech that reveals nothing but the government’s complete exhaustion of ideas, the Convict unleashed his three grand plans to get the country back on its feet. First, it will reduce tariffs on bananas and olives. He then announced that he would reduce the number of employees working at the train station. Finally, he would review how the mortgage industry works, with the intention of introducing a 98% mortgage for people on housing benefits. Because nothing caught the aspirations of ordinary working people except the possibility of entering into negative capital. The only thing missing was the reintroduction of the cone hotline.
It was a measure of how dissociated Johnson had become – he seemed more and more physically debilitated, as if his body had given up on him – that he really seemed to believe he was offering the country a way out of the economic crisis. So he went on to rediscover the housing policy that David Cameron had introduced in 2015 and was dead on arrival.
Package stuff. Someone in Policy Unit № 10 must have spent all 15 seconds figuring this out. “Friends, the boss is talking about Operation Save the Big Dog tomorrow, and we urgently need some ideas to fill in the rest of the nonsense. Everything will work out. They don’t have to be good. Or even working. Because they won’t happen anyway. “
The convict’s understanding of his own reality is weak at best, but his understanding of another’s is non-existent. He seriously believes that people on benefits will be able to save £ 16,000 – more than that and they are losing government support – and that they will be able to buy a house for around £ 105,000. Moreover, Johnson was under the impression that sales would lead to a huge influx to build more affordable social housing. Despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
We will build an economy with high wages and high growth, he concluded. Johnson often contradicts himself, but rarely in the same speech. After all, it was a collector’s item of uselessness. Something that was not lost by the media that accompanied him to Blackpool.
“Are you really making everyone come here just for that?” was the main topic of every question. And Boris had no real answers. His answer to the question of why people should trust him was to lie about building more homes than Labor as mayor of London. And he simply denied it when the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot asked why he thought the OECD ranked the UK’s economic growth in the second lowest place – Russia at the bottom – in the G20. I can’t wait for this exciting announcement as we approach 18th place.
Stick to Boris. United Kingdom. Quickly go somewhere.
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