Notes From Cuckoo Island

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS A STRONG SWEARWORD, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO READ ‘CONSERVATIVES’, LOOK AWAY NOW.

It’s conference season in the UK, during which political parties relocate out of town for a few days to enable their members to discuss policy matters and shag each other, apart from the Conservatives, who assemble to debate how they’re going to continue to fuck the entire country.

A notable facet of democracy* is that its citizens have the right to hold peaceful protest, which explains why a coach load of people on their way to Manchester (the location for this year’s Tory Conference) to express opposition to the privatisation of the NHS were stopped by police before they could bring down the government by waving banners in a shwishy manner.

Meanwhile, tireless anti-Brexit protestor Steve Bray was moved on, several times, by Manchester Police, to stand outside an ever-expanding exclusion zone around the conference centre, which in the end extended to the British Virgin Islands. At one point, he was handed a map of locations they’d specifically allocated to him, but catching a glimpse of it, I’m not sure they’d drawn Rwanda to scale.

Inside the venue, things weren’t that much better. A prominent Tory member of the London Assembly was manhandled out of the building for a very quiet heckle while Suella Naziman Braverman was recreating Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in 1939, talking about the ‘luxury beliefs’ of liberals, warning of a ‘hurricane of mass migration’, and suggesting the Human Rights Act should be renamed the “Criminal Rights Act”. Well, she should know, even though she is, in fact, a Far Right criminal act.

Penny Mordaunt, Minister for Biceps, a title bestowed on her after she held aloft the Sword of State for hours on end during King Charles’** coronation, gave a speech to the assembled throng (no, not ‘thong’, they were all fully dressed by this point) which was um, a little unconventional (meant in its literal sense of being unsuitable for a convention) consisting of twenty minutes of “stand up and fight”:

“Stand up and fight. Because when you stand up and fight, the person beside you stands up and fights. And when our party stands up and fights, the nation stands up and fights. And when our nation stands up and fights, other nations stand up and fight…”

And the even more bizarre:

“Stand up and fight for the freedoms we have won against socialism, whether it is made of velvet or iron.”

At any rate, ‘stand up and fight’ was the main thrust, clearly discernible by professional political analysts skilled at reading between the lines, along with those who heard the phrase ‘stand up and fight’ repeated 6,437 times in twenty minutes. Clearly a bad idea to have given her that sword to carry.

Finally, it was time for the surprise warm-up act for the PM, the PM’s wife, Akshata Murthy, who had come to tell the delegates how they shouldn’t hate this diminutive, unelected Prime Minister quite so much, even if she had forgotten to buy him new trousers for the past 27 years, because he was her best friend and was nice to kittens. Allegedly. Desperate much? But good for her for taking time off from counting the money her husband has enriched her with, by dint of his personally-tailored tax laws specially dedicated to her business interests. (I’ve been married more than once. Not one of my husbands ever dedicated a tax law to me. Which could explain why I’m divorced).

Comes to something when the warm-up act is more popular than the star turn, but yes, we then had to listen to Rishi Sunak – son of a GP and a pharmacist (why hasn’t he mentioned this before?) – ramble on for over an hour as if he was telling an exciting story about heffalumps to 4 year-olds, listing all the things he’s going to ban: the northen leg of HS2 (brave announcement in er, Manchester), smoking, vaping, opposition to fossil fuels, having 112 bins for every household, poor people, disabled people, people with swishy banners, women born in the 1950s, the meat tax***, banana flavoured yoghurt tax, Smoky Bacon Cheesy Wotsit tax, councils telling you when you can go to the shops (though what’s the point, if you can’t buy meat, banana flavoured yoghurts or Smoky Bacon Cheesy Wotsits?), Jackie magazine, Zombie knives, Zombies, and trousers which are a suitable length for a grown man.

In a bid to bolster his comedy credentials, he ended with:

“We will be bold. We will be radical. We will face resistance and we will meet it. We will give the country what it so sorely needs, and yet too often has been denied. A government prepared to make long-term decisions so that we can build a brighter future – for everyone. Be in no doubt: it is time for a change. And we are it.”

I only have the one politics degree, so you’ll forgive me if I take some time to get back to you with what this means. Is he saying his party hasn’t been in power for the past 13 years? That they haven’t given a toss about giving the country what it’s so sorely needed? That it’s time for a change from him and the Tories?

At least that’s one thing we can agree on.

*

*a form of political governance operational in the UK from 1832, until 6th May 2010. (Hold on, that’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?)

**is he called Charles because of his spaniel ears?

***what meat tax?