I see your positively mortified face, utterly stuffed with melancholy contrition, prostrate before the justifiable ire of the disappointed proletariat. You’ve made a terribly big boo-boo, haven’t you, old bean? It simply won’t do to offer anything less than your grandest of apologies. It was an awful mistake, exposing those who truly matter to you most on this sceptred isle to hurt and pain on a positively unimaginable scale. You simply must render yourself supplicant before them, begging their forgiveness.
Hopefully Boris will forgive you, eh? After all, all you really did was say exactly what you were thinking.
We should probably thank you, Jacob Rees-Mogg. The British media seem utterly reluctant to categorise this new era of the Conservative party as exactly what it is – a cabal of fervent right-wing ideologues with fewer principles than Harvey Weinstein’s PR team. Under Boris they’ve haemorrhaged moderates like a pierced abscess, leaving behind few beyond the loyalists and appeasers willing to repeat his empty bluster as if it holds any substance. With your comments on Grenfell, from a position of total ignorance that somehow presumed superiority, you managed to distil and crystallise the sense of contempt and entitlement at the heart of their ideology. It’s an ugly truth, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and one that will undoubtedly relegate your peculiar Victorian ghost cabaret act to the background for the remainder of the the election campaign.
What a start it’s been too, with the Conservative hare somehow deciding that the best way to outpace Corbyn’s tortoise is to shoot itself in both feet a couple of metres off the starting line. The battle plan is clear – attack Corbyn relentlessly, labelling him a dangerous racist idiot, whilst poaching just enough of his investment agenda to look like you’re offering change without ever going far enough to actually fix anything. Quite how Labour can be wrong on everything when the entire Tory manifesto is based on undoing their own legacy is beyond me, but something something Stalin bad, so vote for Boris!
The Conservative race has been less about stumbling and more about ploughing headlong into every hurdle with all the grace of a drunk elk. First you opened your mouth, Jacob Rees-Mogg, then Andrew Bridgen doubled down and shoved both his feet into it. Then Matt Hancock popped up on Twitter to insist the NHS wasn’t for sale, just like he insisted he’d never back proroguing Parliament and just like he insists in the mirror every morning that he’s a big boy now and nobody’s going to take his lunch money. Alun Cairns is gone as Welsh secretary, having quite possibly ignored the fact that one of his aides attempted to sabotage a rape trial. Maybe he watched Boris and decided legal process wasn’t as important as it seemed to be?
Nadhim Zahawi tried to get in on the baseless smear campaign but forgot the golden rule when talking to Andrew Neil, which is ‘never go full Breitbart.’ Johnson himself went to Northern Ireland and seemingly campaigned for Remain, presumably because he got confused and accidentally picked up the alternative Telegraph article he wrote when weighing up his Brexit options before leaving the house. James Cleverly pulled off the impossible and made Kay Burley and Piers Morgan look like competent journalists, proving to the whole world that he wouldn’t recognise the concept of nominative determinism if it jumped up and bit him on his Cleverly Dick.
Now, rounding it all off nicely, Baroness Warsi clearly has zero fucks left to give and is calling out Johnson’s cowardly backtracking on the Islamophobia inquiry. At this point, Sajid Javid is presumably staring blankly into the void of his conscience while his shiny new office fills with tumbleweeds.
If this is the best the country can hope for under the supposedly clear and organised leadership of Boris Johnson we’re in for a treat. A decade’s worth of complicated trade negotiations, helmed by shameless idiots about as effective at communicating their intent as Hodor choking on a throat full of silver spoons.
I see you, Jacob Rees-Mogg, reclining on the sofa on the marble balcony. It’s an utterly unassailable ivory tower, isn’t it, and you’ve had many a splendiferous evening quaffing port whilst peering over its parapets. You and the other Tories have all had a jolly good time running around it, braying and bashing away at the brickwork with your croquet mallets, safe in the knowledge that with only Corbyn to worry about at the gates it would stand forever.
I hear the distant crash somewhere in the basement, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and I see you lift an eyebrow, unsure if you really felt the tiny wobble resonating through the structure. I’m sure it’ll be fine, old bean. Bit of a spillage in the champagne cellar and a few dings to the masonry but old Cleverly’s down there patching it all up. He knows what he’s doing.
Besides, if the whole thing starts tumbling down, you’ll have the common sense to get out, won’t you? I’m sure there’s another one in Monaco that’s just as splendid.
I see you, Jacob Rees-Mogg. I fucking see you.
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