Saturday, 16 July 2022

Five Hopefuls in Fairyland

 If you watched last Friday’s performance of Channel 4's prog ‘Britain’s Next PM: The Conservative Leadership Debate’, you may have thought you'd tuned into an episode of 'Whose Line is it Anyway'. The best the Tory Party could muster (heaven help us) were lined up in front of a studio audience – as against an audience of normal people I assume – to be asked a series of relatively simple questions, unless you are an MP.

This hapless group we were exposed to were: Kemi Badenoch (advertising the Lib Dems in a bright yellow dress), Penny ‘I'm made of solid wood' Mordaunt, Rishi Sunak – allowed to stay up late by nanny, the ever vacant Liz ‘Cheddar' Truss and Tom Tugendhat – the latter being the only one that appeared to have made an effort getting dressed for a public appearance.

For some reason the questions about integrity, honesty, social care and support for the NHS seemed to fox them all. It's almost impossible to summarise their collective answer, aside for Liz Truss who styles herself as the next Queen of the World. We already know what happened to the ‘King of the World’ - he's currently stripping the expensive wallpaper off the wall of his Downing Street flat.

When it came to asking if 'The Convict' (thanks to John Crace of the Guardian for that one), was honest, only Tom Tugendhat gave the required one word answer and got  a round of lukewarm applause for it.

Sunday 17 July sees a second go by the infamous five to convince us – though we don’t have a say in the matter – that they can replace Boris Johnson. Let’s face it; the bar is so low even the Downing Street cat is in with a chance.