It’s a privilege to write funny columns about the news for the Observer, and every Sunday I wake excitedly to see what flows from the slushy pen of our illustrator, David Foldvari. But writing these means I have to read the news every day, a weather eye on the endemic corruption of untouchable ministers, and trawl the filth of social media and the sewer press to see if they vomit forth anything I could spin into satire. Sometimes I feel done in by it, a 6 Music dad Malcolm McDowell with my Clockwork Orange eyes pinned open, flickering images of Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman burning my retina until my heart is broken. Again. It’s the lying I can’t stand.
Can two different things be true at the same time? Or is nothing actually true? What is truth? What are lies? A sandalled seeker searching a lifetime in a desert could encounter more vital incarnations of these questions by observing the current antics of the Tory party’s most malevolent manifestation to date. Schrödinger merely had one lone reality-defying cat. We have an entire reality-defying government. And unlike Schrödinger’s cat, Rishi Sunak doesn’t know how to use a litter tray, preferring to stink out the front benches every time his mouth miaows.
