Heavyweight Tory fantasists up the pace on the road to nowhere
As Theresa May formally relinquishes leadership of fratricidal comedy troupe the Conservative party, the contest to succeed her remains a dish best paired with arsenic. Or perhaps a lightly oaked strychnine. Still, what news from the revels? I’m afraid Kit Malthouse is already out. And that other guy. James Cleverly, maybe? They simply burned too brightly.
Dominic Raab seems to have been disturbed during some policymaking again, leaving dogwalkers to find the remains of an idea to prorogue parliament so that no deal happens by default. On one level, this is the only policy position Dominic can adopt, having already resigned in protest at a deal he himself negotiated as Brexit secretary. However, Raab remains at large in this contest, with people warned not simply to avoid approaching him – that is a given – but to stay away from anyone even backing him. I mean, is he really going to drag the Queen into it? By “it”, I obviously mean a constitutional crisis, not his van.
Elsewhere, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s robot sidekick Steve Baker is still hearing the clamour for him to run, and will if no one else signs up to the ERG’s no-deal plan. “I did go through some training on this,” he announced. “In moments of death or glory, you tell people what you’re doing, you don’t participate.” Two things. One. Is “death or glory” an intentional reference to the 17th Lancers – “the death or glory boys” – and their notable role in the Charge of the Light Brigade? If not, perhaps a less auto-satirical military reference might be found. Two. What “training”?
Is this about the time you got an exservices guy to take you round the back of the warehouse and floor you, apparently for a self-defence video?
But this week, let’s focus on the chaps – and they are all chaps, as rival candidate Sam Gyimah noted – who reckon they can go back to the EU and get a better deal by sheer force of their personality or something. Even though they’ve been told, many times, that they can’t. Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock … you know the pack drill.
As far as this prong of their Brexit strategy goes, they resemble one of those guys whose girlfriend has broken up with them for her own reasons, but who just knows she’s going to change her mind if they make a sufficiently big and bold gesture. You know, like send her flowers. Write her a letter. Write more letters. Start sending the flowers to her work. Play the violin in the street below her flat. Turn up at her work. Call her repeatedly at 1am to demand she doesn’t do this to you both. Send her dogshit at work. What can I tell you? They’re incurable romantics.
Staying in the world of metaphor, I see Michael Gove is back on the analogies again. In the immediate wake of the EU referendum vote, when Michael felt forced to knife Boris Johnson and embark on his own leadership run, he justified it thus: “I compare it to a group of people standing outside a collapsing building, wondering who is going to rescue a child inside. I thought: well, I don’t think I’ve got either the strength or the speed for this, but as I looked around, I thought, God, I’m at least as strong and at least as fast as the others. I’ve got to try to save the child.” I will never get over this characterisation. IT WAS YOU WHO STARTED THE FIRE, YOU MAD BASTARD!
Indeed, there is a distinct flavour of the end-to-end service Michael Gove offers in his latest analogy. “Who is the pilot who has landed the plane successfully at times of turbulence,” he wondered rhetorically this week, “and made sure the passengers are safe and the destination has been reached? I’ve been through a lot of political turbulence and I’ve always been able to land the plane.” Is this the version of the Tom Hanks movie where Captain Sully Sullenberger spends the first act nobbling the engines?
Michael’s what I think of as a Gwyneth Paltrow Conservative, in honour of the way the Goop founder’s fringe lunacies create ailments specifically so she can cure you of them. Or to put in terms the 1922 committee would feel most comfortable with: she’ll sell you a $66 jade egg to pop up your fanny, causing you intense lower back pain, which you will then be advised to cure with a $180 subcutaneous tissue roller, causing livid bruising best treated by some $300 arnica oil. And so on. It becomes very expensive very quickly. (And yes, I AM hoping that this article ends up being headlined “BREXIT WAS A JADE FANNY EGG”.)
And so, finally, to the man Michael’s going to try and reknife at some point in the coming weeks. Boris Johnson has informed MPs they need to “stop banging on about Brexit and put that bawling baby to bed”. Yup, there’s no show without Punch.
News that Johnson has pocketed £700,000 for speeches since leaving office is embarrassing for anyone who paid him, though sadly not surprising. Johnson’s oratorical style is best categorised as speeches for people who don’t like speeches. Indeed, as far as I am aware, he only has one speech – the one where we’re going to sell French knickers to the French, sparkling wine to the Italians, naans to the Indians and so on. I’ve seen it live about 10 times, and in print at least 30. Here he goes again. Off the bar stool for the second chorus.
Like everything about Johnson it is an ersatz version of something else. He is the X Factor contestant covering Winston Churchill. Yet just as Simon Cowell would always rather listen to some autotuned teen’s version of Feeling Good than the Nina Simone original, so large numbers of people seem to prefer Johnson’s inauthentic nonsense to anything of actual quality. He remains the runaway favourite for this contest – the greatest shitshow on earth – and we must all adjust our bunker arrangements accordingly.
• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist