We are now so far through the looking-glass, most of us have forgotten what reality was meant to look like. A parallel universe is the new normal. Take Rishi Sunak. A prime minister so insecure that he no longer invites lobby journalists to all his events. Just in case anyone asks him any difficult questions.
On Monday morning, the prime minister was at Business Connect, a fantasy organisation the government has invented this week to try to show it has moved on from the “fuck business” mindset of Boris Johnson, to peddle his own confusion in front of a bewildered group of business leaders and journalists. All of whom had no idea why they were there or what Rish! was hoping to achieve. Apart from putting the looking busy into business.
Mostly Sunak seemed to want to promote his own fantasy. Just recently he had launched an advertising campaign in Silicon Valley, he said. News to us. News to Silicon Valley too, I should imagine. Anyway this campaign was to rename the United Kingdom as the Unicorn Kingdom.
Yup. Forget tech startups worth $1bn or more. We have a prime minister who thinks renaming the country after an animal that doesn’t exist is a brilliant idea. Brexitland is a new imaginary country where everyone’s dreams come true. And the nuclear family is the Sylvanian Family. The Dismaland theme park has never felt so attractive. Weirdly, Sunak didn’t even look that embarrassed. That was left to his audience.
But the difficult questions couldn’t be avoided for ever. And in the Commons it was left to the junior Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart – Jeremy Quin, the minister who usually gets landed with these thankless gigs, must have for once made himself unavailable – to answer an urgent question on the register of ministerial interests and compliance with the ministerial code.
This is how Burghart saw it. There was a register of members’ interests, which wasn’t a register. It was a list. And then there was a register of members’ interests, which was a register. The two weren’t the same. What the prime minister had done was merely declare everything in the list.
Which was totally as it should have been. People who had been looking in the register of interests for Sunak’s declarations should have been looking in the list. Or vice versa. He wasn’t entirely clear. Other than Sunak had done the bare minimum to keep his dealings transparent. Who could ask for more?
Wendy Chamberlain, the Liberal Democrats’ chief whip, saw it rather differently. The prime minister’s integrity was shot to pieces. He had already lost three senior cabinet ministers and he’s only been in the job for six months. Two ministers had been guilty of bullying, the other of being economical with his tax returns.
We knew nothing about either Nadhim Zahawi’s or Gavin Williamson’s interests because they hadn’t survived long enough to make it on to the register. As for Dominic Raab, surely Rish! must have known something of his behaviour before he appointed him?
Nah, said Burghart. Psycho’s conduct had come as a complete surprise to the prime minister. To everyone in government, even. Apart from those who knew about his reputation as a serial killer. And yes, he was aware there had been complaints from some civil servants about the number of bodies piling up outside his office window. But those people had only been worried about the health and safety risk of decomposing corpses.
Burghart sighed. The thing was that there had been no formal allegations made about Raab when Sunak had appointed him. That was what made him such a brilliant bully. Because the people he bullied stayed bullied. The last thing a bully wanted was for his victims to fight back.
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Things always worked best when they were cowed into submission. Because that was the hallmark of great leadership. Events had only got problematic when people had started speaking out. So the blame lay squarely with them. Typical snowflakes. If people wanted investigations into bullying to be done more quickly, then fewer people should complain. Too many civil servants were clogging up the system.
There was no sign of Raab in the chamber. So it was left to Burghart to apologise on his behalf. Psycho was sorry for any trash who thought they may have been bullied. And he’d gladly come and scream in their ear just how sorry he was. And that was that. Burghart could make no more promises other than ministers would continue to do their best to fill in the lists and registers in a way that gave as little accountability as possible. It was the least they could do for voters. Literally. With that, he was gone.
To be replaced by Andrew Mitchell making a statement on Sudan. Brits could either stay or get out of Khartoum, he said. It was up to them. Just don’t expect any help from HMG. And he hoped – no promises – this evacuation wouldn’t be as big a shambles as Afghanistan. The bar is that low. Welcome to the Unicorn Kingdom.
