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Sometimes it pays to listen to the subconscious. Rishi Sunak likes to imagine he is an above average sentient being. That he has decided to go to the US because he wants to get things done. To save the world from artificial intelligence. To talk up a trade deal between the UK and the US. To drum up support for Ukraine.
Only let’s think this one through. Rish! somehow thinks he has a better grasp on the dangers of AI than anyone else. Maybe because his own thought processes more often resemble artificial stupidity. The reality is he’s no better clued up than anyone else. Probably far less than the Americans, Indians and Chinese. But Sunak is desperate for a mission in life and is trying to position himself as a world statesman. Even though any global agreement would unlikely to be brokered by a country that had just severed its international ties with the EU.
Same goes with a trade deal. We’re years away from an agreement with the US. Rish! would have been better off sending an email to a White House flunkey asking for an update than wasting his and Joe Biden’s time. Likewise with Ukraine. Neither the UK nor the US appear to be flagging in their support. So why bother with a piece of vapid performative politics that achieves nothing? Other than to indulge Airmile Rishi’s taste for foreign travel.
So let’s dig into the murkier recesses of Sunak’s mind. The places where angels fear to tread. Now we get a very different picture. We find a man tortured by his own failure. Someone who has made half-hearted promises to the British people he knows he cannot keep. Deep down, he chokes on the recognition of himself as a fraud. He is no more the uber-competent tech bro than Boris Johnson. At heart he’s just a chancer who can’t resist one more throw of the dice. Just some dealer searching for a card that is so high and wild he’ll never need to deal another.
Rather than face up to the damage associated with his domestic failures, Rish! prefers to do a geographical. To physically relocate himself. To always make sure he’s one time zone ahead of his latest self-inflicted disaster. And there are other upsides. Because Sunak has now learned to time his trips abroad to include a Wednesday lunchtime. There are few greater pleasures to be had than knowing you’ve escaped dying on your feet at prime minister’s questions yet again.
For the second time in just a few weeks, we were faced with Oliver Dowden and Angela Rayner going mano a mano in thumb wars at deputy PMQs. Their reputation had clearly preceded them.
Last time, both deputies had been beyond awful – the whole exercise had smacked of desperation with Dowden cosplaying a redcoat in the sitcom Hi-de-Hi! – and so there were a huge number of empty seats on both sides of the chamber. Those that did turn up would soon wonder why they had bothered.
There again, we could all ask ourselves that. The government frequently complains about nurses, teachers and rail workers going on strike. Completely forgetting it has also been on virtual strike for months.
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Having screwed up everything so badly, ministers have become paralysed with terror at what might go wrong next. So they blink desperately into the light while being unable to do anything. It can only be because they are terrified if they do act, they might make things worse. On Tuesday, the Commons shut up shop at 2.20pm. Clearly, things have never been better.
Beggars can’t be choosers and all that … We are where we are. So Rayner opened her account. And unlike Dowden – known to all as Olive – she had clearly learned from her mistakes. Rather than ramble on pointlessly, she kept it short and sweet. The Tories had promised to do away with time-wasting judicial reviews. So how come they were taking their own Covid inquiry to court in an attempt to withhold information?
Dowden is best understood as an absence. A vacuum in human form. Someone who has had all charm and any possible intelligence sucked out of him. Imagine this. Dowden has spent his whole life preparing for a walk-on role. He is a natural extra. Someone’s plus one who is never going to steal the limelight.
Someone who has learned to say whatever someone else wants him to say. Regardless of whether it’s true or not. Or even makes sense. And yet he can’t even do that properly. He fails at even being a failure. Which somehow makes him the failure’s failure. No wonder the Cabinet Office, of which he is notionally in charge, is completely dysfunctional. Which, for this government, is saying something. The only sign of activity is people shredding classified documents.
Olive predictably acted as if he hadn’t understood the question. Acting dim is second nature to him. Er … the government was committed to wasting as much money as it liked on the inquiry. Anything to stop Heather Hallett getting her mitts on the documents she had requested. Just to save her the bother of reading them. She really didn’t want to be wasting her time on Boris’s party arrangements or Sunak’s effort to remove him. And anyway, why hadn’t Labour organised a Covid inquiry in Wales? Let me think. Might it be something to do with the current inquiry taking in the entire UK?
That was the high point of democracy in action. Olive tried to equate Rayner claiming two pairs of earphones on expenses with Johnson’s hundreds of thousands in legal fees. He even looked baffled when he wasn’t applauded for his casuistry. Nor did he have any idea when or if the £21bn of public money lost in fraud would ever be reclaimed, and he ended by suggesting the country was in tip-top shape with high inflation and rising interest rates. Numbers aren’t his strong point. We have yet to find what is.
Long before the end, MPs on all sides were heading for the exits. Even by Olive’s standards, this had been dismal. Though it was a proxy triumph for Rish!. There’s nothing more reassuring than a hopeless deputy. In the visitors’ box sat the Kiss frontman, Gene Simmons. All dyed black hair and shades. What he thought was anyone’s guess. Then he probably knows all about an institution well past its sell-by date.
