There must be something in the water. It’s normally in early January that people start to think of giving themselves a makeover. New year! New you! That kind of nonsense. But this year, everyone appears to be getting ahead of the game and relaunching themselves in December. Even Gregg Wallace, who is going out of his way to portray himself as a creepy misogynist. Just to eliminate any room for doubt.
Maybe it’s just that everyone has already had enough of 2024. It’s gone on far too long and has all been a bit underwhelming. Few things have quite worked out as anyone had hoped. Westminster itself is limping on to Christmas. While Jess Phillips was introducing a stalking bill, all the Tories really wanted to talk about was Labour giving back the Parthenon sculptures. Which they haven’t even said they are going to do.
But no matter. Every time the Greek prime minister comes to visit the UK, the Tories can’t help losing their … marbles. Boom, Tish! This time, it was shadow junior culture minister Saqib Bhatti accusing the government of giving in to the “radical left” by even thinking of loaning the sculptures back to Greece.
It’s a matter of principle for the Tories. Taking the moral high ground. Because any country that allowed us Britons to ransack their heritage a couple of hundred years ago clearly couldn’t be trusted to look after its own treasures.
Obviously, what would happen if we returned the sculptures to the Greeks was that, in next to no time, some other country would casually come along and help themselves to them. And this new country wouldn’t look after them as well as us, so the only solution was to keep the marbles here at the British Museum. Just as well no one came to Britain and helped themselves to Stonehenge. Because the Conservatives would then be leading the campaign for it to stay in its new home.
Amid all this confected nonsense, Labour is planning its own reset on Thursday. Now, forgive me for being a bit dim, I could have sworn Labour had already had one or two resets already. Even though we’re only five months into the new government. There was the one where Keir Starmer called everyone back early from their summer holidays to tell them that everything was even more shit than he had imagined and everyone was going to die.
Then there was the reset after the freebies row. That time Keir promised to stick to wearing cheap suits and pay for his own footie tickets. After that, we got the reset in which Labour ousted Sue Gray and promised to look less chaotic.
Now we have the big one. A reset so big that it was briefed to the papers a week before its launch. Presumably, to allow the government a chance to rework anything that didn’t land well. To reset the big reset. Here we were promised some “measurable milestones”. Hmm. Most of us would just settle for some basic signs of competence. At the moment, it feels like every cabinet minister is lying low, terrified of the sky falling in.
Labour aren’t the only ones planning a reset. So is Boris Johnson. Sort of. Obviously, there’s an ontological problem here. Because a sociopathic liar is always going to lie. It’s what they do. So it’s hard to know whether Boris is having a reset or just lying. Or, more confusingly, is lying about having a reset.
Whatever. Earlier this week, Johnson gave an interview with Spectator TV prior to flying down under to inflict his dreary – and largely fictitious – memoir on Australia and New Zealand. Lucky them. Still, it gives us a break, I suppose. But in between talking of “juddering climaxes” – truly, Boris is the Gregg Wallace of the political sphere. No chance to make inappropriate sexual innuendo gets missed – Johnson tried to position himself as a long-term Eurosceptic.
He had been campaigning for Britain to leave the EU for the past 30 years, he insisted. A claim that went totally unchallenged. Only he hadn’t, of course. There are plenty of TV interviews with him this century in which he says he would vote to remain in the EU and that the single market and customs union were things of beauty. Boris’s long-term struggle to rewrite his life into a version with which he can live goes on. It will be work in progress until he pops his clogs.
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s reset is rather more prosaic. A reality show on Discovery+ called Meet the Rees-Moggs, in which Jacob comes across rather better than expected, largely thanks to the appearance of his wife, Helena, and his six children. That’s not to say they won’t need therapy by the time the last episode has aired, but so far so good. Jakey has a lot to thank his family for. They have a lot to put up with.
As part of his promotion for the show, on Tuesday, Rees-Mogg appeared on a Popular Conservatism webinar with Mark Littlewood, the former head of the Institute of Economic Affairs. A chance to remind everyone that he is still very much around and reports of his political demise have been exaggerated. We have been warned.
Jacob began with the show. He’d wanted to be more like Nigel Farage. A man of the people in an oversized suit. Gradually, we waltzed through the Tories’ recent back stories. Amazingly, despite having been a minister under two prime ministers, Rees-Mogg didn’t hold himself to blame for anything. It had all been someone else’s fault. He was the last living true Conservative. The party had been overtaken by socialists. The Bank of England were Commies. As were the civil service.
It was time to forget about net zero. He has no idea how energy price tariffs work. Imagine that if we were to frack the entire country, then we would have cheap energy for generations to come. Brexit was the one true religion. The importance of the nation state. Standing alone. Bowing to no international bodies. Nato. The UN. The ECHR. The ICC. They were all dead to him.
This was the Jakey that he had kept hidden in Meet the Rees-Moggs. There, he had been effortfully charming. Happy to be seen as an English eccentric. Here, he was altogether more disturbing. A fanatic who believed the country was in the hands of the hard left. For which the only solution was to tack ever further to the right. It’s not a country many of us would recognise. Perhaps he needs yet another reset.
Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
