Dear Orkney News,
They think it’s all over- it is now. Except it isn’t.
If there was evidence needed to show how corrupt and useless UK politics at Westminster has become, the past few days have delivered it in lorry loads.
After several weeks of an ongoing political hokey cokey it seemed that on Thursday July 7th the game was up at last for Boris Johnson. Rumours abounded of Downfall scenarios in the Downing Street Fuhrerbunker, with Johnson firing previous- although always temporary- supporters like Gove and much talk of whisky and revolvers.
At one point I heard that in the ensuing chaos a tea lady became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for a brief period.
However, when the smoke cleared Johnson came out to deliver a resignation speech that never mentioned resignation, and which was more in line with setting himself up to be the next PM by listing all the imaginary achievements of his impressively fabricated CV, and then went back to work, holding a Cabinet meeting in the afternoon in the office which he’d been told he wasn’t fit for, and by many of the people in the room at the meeting.
So, today the ex-PM is still the PM, and is likely to be for a while, until his successor is decided by the 0.4% of the voting population in the Conservative Party in an act that will foist the latest favourite of our ex-dom media barons on a population that mostly doesn’t care, as long as his hair is nice and he has a cheeky quip.
What was also apparent was that there seemed to be a reticence for anyone in the Cabinet to move into an Interim PM slot. I’m still struggling to wonder why there is a Deputy PM post when he apparently can’t deputise for the PM. I’m on the fence as to whether I’d want him within a lilo’s length of the post anyway. At this point I’m not even sure Gove was fired. I suspect someone tried to grab him but his tail broke off and he was able to run out to a waiting car. I suspect the true answer to all this is that I’ve never seen such a lack of obvious talent outside of a heat of Battle Of The Bands featuring ten year olds.
And so the possible replacements limber up, ready to face the Tory Party faithful.
Suella Braverman, who I wouldn’t trust with a drinks order for three people.
Ben Wallace, who used to be in the Army and still thinks he is.
Liz Truss, who makes Annie Wells look like Stephen Hawking.
Nadhim Zahawi, who could sell snake oil to a snake oil salesman.
Jeremy Hunt, if they can defrost him to room temperature in time.
Grant Shapps-that’s his name this week, and several others, including Sunak and Javid, possibly irreparably damaged by carrying out a sensible act for once in their careers.
Thankfully James Cleverly isn’t going forward, so that reduces the size of this letter by half.
Finally, there is a strong possibility that another will be Boris Johnson.
In political terms he’s as hard to kill as James Bond, and he will certainly never say never again.
Eamonn Keyes, Orkney
