The wine stains were finally rubbed off the walls at number 10. The vomit-strewn bins were thrown into the booth. The carpets were steam cleaned. The last of the laggards was led out the back door, away from the intrusive CCTV cameras.
Boris Johnson fought the hangover to stumble downstairs to thank the little people for all the work they had done. Although it was really an opportunity for the cleaners to apologize to Boris. The special one. The holy man. They couldn’t believe how badly he was disappointed with his staff, and they wanted to apologize for being so slow to clear the mess. Or so Boris heard it.
Finally, 10 Buldingden Street was ready to move on. Even if the rest of the country was not. Now it was just a matter of calculating the total expenses of the parties № 10 – something that Rishi Sunak was preparing to do in the Municipality while presenting his latest budget. Most governments are happy to deal with one a year, but this chancellor is now the third and we have not yet reached the summer. Give it a try and there will be a few more by the fall.
The convict crashed into the room just seconds before Sunak stood up. It looked awful, even by today’s standards. It was as if he had just stumbled out of bed. He can barely keep his swollen eyes open, his little child’s hair everywhere, his suit dirty, his face stained.
If he ever looked in the mirror, he would go to the hills. He could barely stand the 20 minutes it took the chancellor to spend the money he didn’t know he didn’t have. When Rishi was done, he rushed to the exit. Probably to find a trash can to throw up in. We Tories are so happy to have it.
Sunak didn’t look much better. Not that he looked so sick as empty. The last few months have taken their toll as he has moved from a candidate for leadership to a candidate as well. Just the temporary holder of 11 Downing Street. He’s never a big man, now he seems to take up negative space. Blink and you miss. Not so much presence as absence.
On the other hand, you would probably want to disappear if you knew that the next hour would be a ritual humiliation. For weeks now, the chancellor has been insisting that he has no money to help with living expenses and that an unforeseen tax is unthinkable. It was non-conservative. People struggling to pay their bills just have to stop whining and accept that there are limits to what they can expect from the government. In fact, the poorest had to die. Natural selection and all that.
Now, however, Sunak had to explain that the Sunak who had said all this was a very different Sunak from the one in the Municipalities. He had a long experience outside the body and was possessed by an alien. Because the man who had said he didn’t care was not really him.
Rishi tried to soften his expression. Later in the day, he realized he cared. He really sympathizes with people who can’t afford £ 10,000 to rent a helicopter to take them to a conservative fundraising campaign. Although, for the most part, he simply had feelings for the Convict. Because no one doubted he was really doing all this to save Johnson. If the government had not lied its way through Partygate, there would have been no need to disperse the rescue package.
So here was the deal. Sunak was very worried about inflation. But unlike the governor of the Bank of England, he believed he could do something about it. And what he was going to do was get the governor to do something about something he said he couldn’t control. Think about it, if you can. There he said again that he was cutting taxes in the same way he was raising them. None of this seems to fill any of his colleagues in the front bench with much optimism that he knows what he is doing.
With inflation under control, Sunak apparently felt confident about exposing his package, which was in no way intended to cover up party waste. First, he would introduce an unforeseen tax, which was not an unforeseen tax. And they certainly didn’t steal it from Labor, who has been advocating for such a tax for the past five months. The Tories have had the idea for just as long. They just didn’t know what to call it. So welcome to the world of “Temporary targeted energy”.
Then came the idea of turning a pre-arranged loan into a grant. Bookmark. Another work plan has emerged. It was as if the opposition had been given the opportunity to write the budget. Last but not least, when Sunak has become even more generous than Labor once intended with an additional £ 10 billion in alms, much of which surprisingly goes to those who need it most. The Chancellor had no idea how he would pay for all this, of course, but he had never had any of his previous budgets then. Maybe something would come up. Otherwise, we were heading for a bigger inflationary migraine.
Sign up for the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every weekday morning at 7am BS
Labor’s Rachel Reeves has just risen to applause. Let’s just say there will be no fee for cutting Labor’s copyright, but now it may be a good idea to hand over control of the whole economy to it. And she would not humiliate Sunak by saying how many turns he made. Well, maybe only that three times. The Chancellor could not look her in the eye. Instead, he kept his eyes on his shoes. It was shrinking faster than the economy. It would have been nice if one of his colleagues had picked it up and put it in his pocket.
Of the Tory backbenchers, only John Redwood and Richard Drax reported concern. The others simply sucked it out, maintaining their record of deep intellectual dishonesty, pretending that this was what they had always wanted and that they cared too. If it was a Labor government, they would shout shouts of socialism.
However, they will undoubtedly get another chance to rediscover their Tory roots. The current £ 15 billion package will barely touch the surface of the cost of living crisis. Adhesive plaster. Long before the end of the year, people will get cold and hungry. Then we’ll see how generous The Convict and Sunak feel. There will probably be some dirt they want to cover up. So it will simply be a matter of guilt that prevents them from doing the right thing.
Add Comment