The new regime is a listening regime. Its mercies are bountiful. It wants its people to be blessed with happiness. Which is why its new leaders sent out Liz Truss to appear on the BBC late on Monday night. To reassure everyone that, despite her increasingly erratic behaviour, the figurehead prime minister was OK. That she still was just as incompetent as she had always been.
Librium Liz had staggered into the Downing Street room, her eyes struggling to adjust to the TV lights. She was being treated well, she began. Her voice was a dull, detached monotone. There was ample food, she got 45 minutes in the exercise yard and was allowed one telephone call per day to her family. Thérèse Coffey was keeping her supplied with a steady stream of prescription drugs. Nobody could possibly ask for more.
But how was she really, asked Chris Mason. Truss blinked 15 times. A desperate coded message, begging for release, that went unnoticed. She started speaking again. Crushed. All hopes of freedom gone. She was deeply sorry for all the things that she had got wrong. No one but Rishi Sunak, the IMF, the OBR, the Bank of England and every other vaguely sentient being could have foreseen that unfunded taxes would crash the economy.
Her only regret was that she had been so far ahead of the game. There had been nothing wrong with her economic plan. It hadn’t been that she had tried to implement her growth policies too quickly. It had been that the country had been far too slow to realise her brilliance. But she wasn’t going to blame the country. That wouldn’t be fair. Even though it had all been the country’s fault.
Truss again blinked repeatedly. This time even more deliberately. H-E-L-P-M-E. She waited on a miracle that wasn’t coming. All she could do was stick to the script she had been given. It would have been so much easier to have resigned herself rather than sack Kwasi Kwarteng for doing as she asked. But she had chosen the road less travelled. She had chosen bravery. Only someone with immense courage would have done as she had done.
“I wanted to deliver the delivery that the people of Britain wanted me to deliver,” Librium Liz said, making even less sense than usual. “That’s why I get up in the morning.”
Then bloody well stay in bed, the rest of the country shouted. Honestly, make yourself at home. Don’t get up on our behalf. Every time you go downstairs you cost the average family an extra £500. We’ve had enough instability in the national interest.
In desperation, Truss went for broke. “I’m planning on leading the Conservatives into the next election,” she said. Surely everyone would know she was lying now. See through the facade and come to her rescue. Two apparatchiks from the regime walked into the room and switched off the cameras. The joke had gone far enough. You try to give someone a second chance – a shot at redemption – and this was how you got repaid.
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“We need a safe pair of hands for the morning media round,” said Jeremy Hunt, polishing his thigh-length leather boots. “I can’t do it because it can’t look as if I’m leader and chancellor. And we’ll have to stop Captain Mordaunt from doing it. She’s far too popular. Her disloyal show of loyalty during Monday’s Urgent Question was just nauseating. So how about you, Tiz?”
Coffey was spotted mumbling incoherently face down in the gutter.
“I’m afraid she’s overdosed on Librium Liz’s benzodiazepines,” said Ben Wallace.
“Will you do it then?
“Er no … Got to go. Got an important meeting in Washington. Suddenly need to be 3,000 miles away. Why not get James Heappey to do it instead? He’s too stupid to even realise he’s a useful idiot.”
So shortly before 7am, the junior defence minister was in the broadcast studios. It wasn’t a great success. First he told Sky News that everyone in the cabinet had signed off on Kamikwasi’s mini-budget. Are you seriously telling us that no one in government had any concerns, said Kay Burley. I could have understood if Kwarteng and Librium Liz had gone rogue and forgotten to tell you. But for all of you to sign it off with no OBR forecasts is an unprecedented level of dim.
Heappey nodded enthusiastically. It had been a huge honour to have participated in a decision that had cost the country more than £10bn and people with mortgages thousands of pounds each. He took the doctrine of collective irresponsibility immensely seriously.
By the time he made it round to the Today studios, Heappey could barely string a sentence together. Which bizarrely made him sound slightly more coherent and plausible. He did at least attempt some gravitas. Truss had made no secret of her desire to tank the economy. She had openly boasted of doing just that during the leadership hustings. So we should be congratulating her on a Mission Accomplished.
That just left the Prime Minister in Name Only a cabinet to get through. The end of the triple lock just another broken promise. Her shame was our shame. Her humiliation, our humiliation. The classic Trussterfuck. The People’s Republic of Trussia was dead. Long live the People’s Republic of Trussia.
