To Westminster, district of the damned, where the Conservatives are plotting to commit leadercide yet again. They’ve dispatched so many over the past few years that it’s possible they regard Harold Shipman as the real opposition. You certainly get the feeling he could poll higher than them.
This morning, hot-mess chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng landed back in the UK, ready to drop the corporation tax cut in a joint announcement with Liz Truss, the new prime minister, whose central leadership pitch it was. Long story short: former Rishi Sunak-backer Jeremy Hunt is now chancellor and Truss has given one of the worst press conferences in the entire history of the genre, shortly after sending Kwarteng a letter “deeply respect[ing]” his decision to get knifed by her. Even Kwarteng’s predecessor, Nadhim Zahawi, held the office longer.
Ooh, hang on – chief secretary to the Treasury Chris Philp is also out. Fast food outlets currently have a slower turnover rate than the Treasury. Only yesterday, at the International Monetary Fund meeting he later fled, Kwarteng was declaring: “I really enjoy the Treasury. I really enjoy No 11.” Glad he took time to smell the roses. They blow up so quickly.
For some time now, it has been impossible to listen to Truss babbling about being “in lockstep” with her chancellor without imagining her being cut off by Agent Smith from the Matrix with the grimly brusque words: “No, prime minster, your chancellor is already dead.” In fact, it was over two weeks ago that Kwarteng suffered the fate of various movie villains. He may have appeared to be intact since then, but he had actually been very cleanly sliced in half, or delay-killed with a forbidden martial arts technique known as “the kiss of the markets”. Ironically, he departs the stage just as his mini-budget is finally becoming worthy of its descriptor. At this rate of U-turn, it will be so mini that the only thing left in it will be some opening remarks.
Will Hunt coming on for Kwarteng be enough to save Truss for 15 minutes or so? It’s not great when your first throw of the dice is also your last. Still, let’s take the temperature of the Conservative party’s restive MPs. According to their own heroic off-the-record testimony, the mood this week ran the gamut from “funereal” to “unspeakably bleak”. “We are being offered the choice of a shit sandwich,” one MP explained, “or a shit sandwich with extra shit.” Righto. When this was being said on Thursday, Truss had been prime minister for precisely 37 days. Coincidentally, that’s the exact number of days that elapsed between the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and Britain joining the first world war – whose outbreak was arguably the only chain of events in modern history involving worse human error.
With only 9% of them holding a favourable view of her, it’s fair to say the public have got the ick with Liz Truss – and you don’t come back from the ick. Apparently keen to help, Jacob Rees-Mogg has had another date with density, spending much of the week trying to use his culture war playbook on the markets. Which is a bit like trying to have an Oxford Union debate with gravity. Things went from worse to worser after Truss’s Wednesday night appearance before the 1922, which you might know is that weirdo committee where they bang the desks and honk in-group gibberish like it’s Hogwarts for grownups and their house has just won a flying pensions-crashing match. Having to pay regular attention to things that happen at this cursed convocation has been one of the many, many indignities of British life over the past six years of chaos.
But there are always more indignities in the post. Take repeated attempts to make the idea of “Grant Shapps, party grandee” happen. Earlier this week, a plan was actually floated to install a man who once had multiple online aliases as a “caretaker prime minister”. Sorry, but what? I honestly wouldn’t install Grant as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel. Even Newcastle United hasn’t had caretakers that bad. Furthermore, if the UK wishes to hang on to its last remaining shred of dignity, it should be made clear that the position of “caretaker prime minster” is not an actual thing. Having the most important job in the country placed in the hands of a caretaker really is giving up: a signal that we should be moved out of the “declining” category and reclassified firmly in the “declined”.
The Shapps plan seems now to have been overtaken by a ruse to install Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt on a joint ticket. An anonymous briefing to the Times on this matter is here reproduced in full. “Rishi’s people, Penny’s people and the sensible Truss supporters who realise she’s a disaster just need to sit down together and work out who the unity candidate is,” this MP breezed. “It’s either Rishi as prime minister with Penny as his deputy and foreign secretary, or Penny as prime minister with Rishi as chancellor. They would promise to lead a government of all the talents, and most MPs would fall in behind that.”
I mean … I’ve been staring at that quote for some time, trying to work out what precisely it is about it that has sent me to the brink of fatal apoplexy. On balance, I think it’s the chirpy high-handedness in the face of vast destruction. Like getting to the end of the second world war and writing the peace on a napkin: “Germans exiled to Madagascar; French have to live in the ruins of Germany for collaborating; Brits get France for second homes and wine supply. Bish-bosh. Sound OK to you?” On the one hand, I guess I’ll take it. On the other: IT’S A BIT MORE EFFING COMPLICATED THAN THAT.
As for the people who got us here, I must say I think of them increasingly often – those 81,000 Conservative party members who voted for Truss, and who are out there somewhere, right now, keeping their little heads down. But they walk among us. Maybe one of them is at a water cooler or a Zoom meeting near you.
It’s yet another of those situations where the right to electoral privacy has been prioritised over your right to scream, “What the hell have you done, you massive idiot? We’re all neck-deep in this crap because of you! Are you happy now? WELL, ARE YOU?”
The thought of things happening in the same way again, ever, is simply too much. Ideally, these triennially calamitous Conservative leadership contests will henceforth be run like one of those international elections in a fledgling democracy, when voters’ fingers are dipped in indelible ink. That way when you’re having drinks after work and Steve from HR is feebly going, “Yeah, what a mess” but not quite meeting your eye, you can look down at his stained forefinger and deal with him accordingly.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £18.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at https://www.guardianbookshop.com/what-just-happened-9781783352593?utm_source=editoriallink&utm_medium=merch&utm_campaign=article. Delivery charges may apply.
