From the bizarre to the just plain ridiculous

It’s like some sort of a 1970’s Lindsay Anderson weird farcical cinema this, along the lines of ‘Britannia Hospital’ or ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the UK in 2022.

One huge unkempt dollop of incompetent, (sometimes criminally and dangerously so) buffoonery comes charging along Downing Street to a rousing reception from his band of self-entitled acolytes, wine swillers and fine payers, on his last day in office. Celebrated like a returning hero. 

For what? Being absolutely and demonstrably useless at the job he was given three years ago. Rewarded for being the most ineffectual sub-standard Prime Minister in living memory.

Like most people I was utterly astonished at the time, when bizarrely, the former “Have I got News For You’ extra, bungling ex-mayor of London, with his expensively-bought rusting riot control water cannons and plans for Jurassic Park bridges, somehow ended up as the Prime Minister of the UK, and what a disaster he has been. 

Everything about the man is a front, no substance, no real intellect, just a strong sense of self-entitlement and a fortified brass neck, an extreme Wide-O with a posh accent.

Then a bit later on in the day, amidst showers of heavy rain and thunder lightning heralding a sense of foreboding, another (not quite as big in stature) lump of incompetent buffoonery, possibly, if it is indeed feasible, worse, and even less qualified or able for the job than Boris Johnson, comes strolling along the Downing Street pavement, adopting the ludicrous power-stance that Tory politicians seem to have been talked into by their media affairs bods, and takes over the reins of power. 

This again to a rousing cheer from the Party staff and insiders, competing with each other in displaying enthusiasm, hoping to keep their jobs or get access to an even bigger feed at the trough amongst the early days of a new government.

Whereas Johnson seems to have had a weird fantasy going on in his mind for some time that he is some kind of a 21st century reborn Winston Churchill, we’ve all seen, from the umpteen media photographs this genuine ‘attention seeker’ has had taken over the last while, who Liz Truss models herself upon.

I mean this as no compliment to Margaret Thatcher when I write that an examination of Liz Truss’s past decision-making as a politician in government and being subjected to watching and listening to her public pronouncement in the media, I fear she thinks she has the ability and potential steel of the Iron Lady, but she doesn’t have the self-awareness to realise she doesn’t have the intellect to go with it. 

The Tories are most definitely scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel.

Thankfully we were spared from the hypocrisy of any Margaret-esque quotes from St Francis of Assisi. 

Oh, she’ll definitely create headlines. She is crude and crass. She’ll say whatever Daily Mail readers want her to say. She’ll be controversial and relish looking like the school bully, She will blow with the wind, but when it comes to the crunch, she does not have what it takes to be a leader, particularly right now when the economy is trying hard to repeat the early 1980’s and the private sector are shaking down the long-suffering public like never before. Oh, and there might be a shooting war!

I fear panicked kneejerk reactions may be her response to pressure. If she cannot answer, like last weekend, in an interview with Tory-pet presenter Laura Kuenssberg, reasonably easy softball lay-up questions without developing a strange blinking tick in her eye, akin to Herbert Lom when he hears the word ‘Clouseau’, it doesn’t bode well for her ability to handle stressful situation.

Statesperson-like she certainly is not. I would pay a ransom to be a fly-on -the -wall the day her smug expression finds itself standing on the doorstep of Bute House in Edinburgh. In terms of leadership there can be no doubt how that meeting will go, and as the First Minister jokingly requested of Lorraine Kelly on TV yesterday, she should come along to hold the jackets.

Surely Scotland, governed by the people who live there, can do so much better than the clown circus at Westminster? Promises have been reneged and the UK has changed so much for the worse, out of sight, since 2014 that any argument that “You had your referendum in 2014 and people said No” should be laughed right out of the room. Anyone who can’t see that simply doesn’t want to accept the truth.

Independence is normal. Independence is inevitable. Independence is coming.