The United Kingdom: the fever dream continues …
By: James King
Tags: United Kingdom, National Insurance, Michael Gove, Brexit, Boris Johnson

I would like to say that this week can be neatly encapsulated in a pithy, yet elegant essay — but it really isn’t.

In a period of a few days The Spectator published an article by Lionel Shriver that was basically an argument in support of Replacement Theory and then, in it’s latest edition, a cartoon depicting the PM in a dinner suit getting a hand-out from a homeless man.

The Telegraph, an ardent supporter of the PM, and former employer, has attacked him for breaking his promises on tax, following a vote that will allow him to raise National Insurance 1.25 per cent.

Right-wing, moral free, thinktank the Institute of Economic Affairs has also attacked this hike in NI contributions as — wait for it — “a moral outrage”.

What a dramatic turn of events. Why has this happened?

Have all these formerly awful, amoral, uber-capitalists been visited by three ghosts; awaking from their slumber clutching their fine Egyptian cotton sheets and screaming that they will change their ways, if only given a second chance?

Who knows? Well, we do know, and the answer is a resounding “Hell, no!”

What has happened is that their rich dreams of a European Singapore is fast disappearing, and this new, fantastical idea of putting up taxes to pay for stuff is the last straw. A labour shortage, combined with wage rises for HGV and LGV drivers, will push up inflation and it is likely that this will also see an overall rise in wages. HERESY!

What these people really wanted was a low-tax, low wages authoritarian country where the big boss with waxed moustaches can fire people with a flick of his Mont-Blanc whilst planning on how they can dispatch their niece to get at her massive inheritance.

They were mostly cheerleaders for the type of Brexit where they could do away with human and employment rights, Climate action, welfare and namby-pamby ethical and moral integrity. They were the kind of people for whom “Brexit Unchained: 100 reasons why the Tories are shit*” is masturbatory material.

This is what happens when you combine an unfit potato as PM, and allow him to select the results of a hazardous experiment to see what people would look like with their brains and hearts removed, to take cabinet positions. They fuck up so badly they have to find a way to recoup the losses made by helping their mates and not actually doing any work.

And so, the liberal/progressives amongst us find ourselves, once again, with very odd bedfellows. Even the excitable Brexit supporting child, Darren Grimes, has realised that the Government is, and I quote “a shower”. He missed the words “of shit”, but the point is clear.

The right-wing, who have known for as long as the rest of us that the PM was a feckless waste of space, are now finding that they too will be affected by his feckless waste-of-space-ness.

What happens next is anyone’s guess, but it is very likely that the squelching noise you can hear is the sound of Michael ‘Disco’ Gove stretching into his human suit and preparing for another run at replacing the PM.

Gove will be hoping that his latest foray into human behaviour — dancing awkwardly — will endear him to a broad coalition of the Tories.

Good luck with that.

Anyway, another week has come to an end, and we wait agog to see what next week will bring: Jim Davidson writing an article attacking the Texan Abortion laws? Mel Gibson giving a rousing speech on racial inequality? Nigel Farage interviewing panto legend Christopher Biggins on Brexit (hang on, that last one already happened, didn’t it? Fuck!).

Until next time, dear reader, until next time.

*Not its real title … or is it?