“Suella Braverman’s use of the word hurricane is intentional. It presents people as a threat, making it easy to commit acts of barbarism against (them). It’s sinister, it’s shocking, that that language is used by our Home Secretary” (Emma Dabiri)
Vowing to review ‘hair-brained schemes’ such as ULEZ, Rishi Rich went to a scruffy-looking Salford 1st October to squirm as Laura K. quizzed him on tory Cornwall council wanting 20 mph zones, electioneering and HS2. Party members leaving in droves, including nice capitalist Richard Walker, minister’s conference speeches were shifted to a small auditorium but Shatts still had to fill the front row with aides.
Gill Keegan proposed to ban mobile phones in schools. Concrete crumbling and kids falling behind in their development due to covid lockdowns, it was good to know she was focused on the real priorities! The C**t said he’d raise the national living wage to £11, strengthen benefit sanctions and freeze civil service recruitment to cut £63,000 jobs, saving £1bn in 2024. Swellen warned of a hurricane of mass migration. Raucously applauded by acolytes, others railed at her reckless language. Alicia Kearns advised caution in the use of words. Totally delusional Trussed-Up Liz tipped up to urge ‘New Conservatives’ (yet another splinter group) to ‘unleash their inner conservative’.* She and Nasty Patel praised ‘disrupter’ GB news for taking on the establishment. Eh? They were the establishment! More enthusiastic clapping was followed by a Twitter backlash likening it to 1984. Patel then went dancing with Farage. The horror of the Nasty Duo could never be unseen!
Channel 4’s film Partygate brought some light relief. Its focus on the antics of Number 10 aides amusing, it shied away from implicating ministers. No doubt lawyers had something to do with that.
Having promised to make a ‘considered decision’ on HS2, Rishi used his conference speech, ironically in an old Manchester train station, to confirm scrapping the northern leg. The saved £36bn would be reinvested in transport infrastructure across the country such as ‘network north’ links, electrified train lines, Leeds trams and a new Bradford station – again! Pleasing Lee Anderthal who though HS2 ‘a load of nonsense’ and lauded by the faithful, he was lambasted by everyone else. Ex-PMs Boris and Camoron believed cancelling a project with cross-party consensus wrong and Will Wragg tweeted there was only one thing worse than a white elephant; half a white elephant. Tory mayor Andy Street who’d joined The Bunman in pleading for it not to be scrapped, almost resigned. Bunman was livid at treating northerners as second class citizens by making such a big announcement at conference. Tracy Bin called it a betrayal and Henri Murrison of Northern Powerhouse Partnership called it a ‘national economic tragedy’. The Budget destined to outlive Rishi’s tenure, he subsequently claimed the projects (some of which had already been built) were ‘illustrative’. Government unwilling to put a figure on funds available in the near future, they insisted HS2 would still reach Euston. It then emerged that was fully dependent on private investment. So like all Rishi’s decisions, money was the overriding factor, explaining the damning word cloud Laura K. confronted him with.
Despite Rishi reciting a gammon wish-list and idiotically saying ‘a man is a man, a woman is a woman, it’s just common sense’, even Daily Mail readers weren’t happy. Perhaps, like the rest of us, they didn’t believe any of the promised projects would actually happen or maybe they preferred the Nasty Duo.
Suspended over breaking coronavirus laws, Margaret Ferrier had been removed as Rutherglen MP and labour won the seat 5th October by a landslide. On QT, red wall tory Dick Holden denied Swellen’s rhetoric sounded like Enoch Powell. Irish writer Emma Dabiri considered it ’intentional, sinister and shocking’. After saying tories had ‘drifted out of touch’ during the cost of living crisis, failed to conserve the economy, high street, farming, rivers and seas, zero carbon obligations, schools or the NHS, Richard Walker expanded on why he left the party. He was also worried shopworkers, with already enough to do, would have to enforce new smoking laws. Emma Dabiri ended the programme talking about hyper-normalisation; the old Nazi trick of replacing the real narrative with a fake, simple one. Yep, that was what was happening alright!
On Laura K. 8th October, Curry’s boss Alex Baldock decried daft planning laws – the Chinese built a whole railway in the time it took to build a single UK factory. At the labour conference in Liverpool, Steve Reed told a fringe meeting tories were shit. Although her boss said a mess of ‘rehashed old promises’ rendered a future labour government re-committing to HS2 impossible, Reeves promised a review of the fiasco as well as a Covid Corruption Commissioner to recoup money, and a rebuilt Britain when she was chancellor.
In his oration, Keir said we’d had 13 years of things can only get better followed by 13 years of things getting worse but Britain could heal and get its future back. His new labour meant an end to sticking-plaster politics, a proper plan to fix tomorrow’s problems today, no more gesture politics and a party of service putting the country first. Promising big, he cautioned it needed a decade’s hard work – i.e., jam tomorrow. I doubt he won over the gammons with his plans to bulldoze local opposition to build 1.5 m houses. Jacketless and hair sparkling, he’d been pranked by a posh boy shouting about true democracy. The protestor was dragged out and put in a police van. We wondered what the charge was. Glittering in a public place?**
*At a NewsXchange conference in Dublin a few months ago, Truss referred to the lettuce outlasting her Downing Street tenure as ‘puerile’ rather than real journalism. A bit rich seeing as she wasn‘t a real PM!
** People Demand Democracy (‘friends’ of JSO) later claimed responsibility.
The Corvus Diaries 