Hall Of Shame: Week ending 5th February 2023

 

It's time for the miscreants, mountebanks and maniacs, the irrepressible and the irredeemable. It's not totally serious, it's not totally silly, but it is this week entries into the Live & Direct Hall Of Shame!

A Dishonourable Mention to Bill Cash, Tory MP for Brexit. He's accused the BBC of lying about the reasons why we haven't seen any Brexit benefits. Instead he chose to blame Covid and the War In Ukraine as to why. Bill, when you see one of these supposed Brexit benefits, can you please point it out to the rest of us? At the moment, we're looking for flying pigs, unicorns and dragons!!!

The Bronze goes to our current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Talk TV's Piers Morgan. Sunak gave an interview to Piers, where he claimed he wasn't rich, but “Financially fortunate”. This is what happens when rich people talk about their own wealth, they don't know just how wealthy they actually are. Why is Piers Morgan on here though? Well during that interview he apparently wasn't having a good time of it, as his microphone went wrong. We could still hear him though, worse luck!!!

The Silver to Andrew Tate, who is still languishing in a Romanian jail cell after being denied his appeal to be released from detention, again. You know, I always thought that Alpha Males never whined and complained about anything, they just got on with it. Andrew on the other hand seems to do nothing but complain.

But our Fool's Gold award winner this week is former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the one who was outlasted by a lettuce. She gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph, where she claimed that she believed she was “brought down by the left wing economic establishment”. Liz, I hate to break this to you, but the economic establishment isn't exactly left wing. It leans to the right, towards maintaining the status quo, and your mini budget wasn't maintaining the status quo, it was radical and full of things that gave the economic establishment a certifiable case of the jitters. “Left wing economic establishment”!!! Mind you, when you're that far out on the extreme right, I suppose even centre right looks like left wing!!!

Liz “left wing economic establishment” Truss, now and forever inducted into the not totally serious Live & Direct, Hall Of Shame!

Viewpoint: Politicians trying to return to centre stage

 

So Rishi Sunak has managed to survive over 100 days in office. Now by itself, that doesn't seem like anything worth talking about, but let's remember that his predecessor, Liz Truss, didn't even make it to 50 days in office.

However, the longer his tenure in number 10 goes on, the more it looks like the same kind of shenanigans that we saw during Boris Johnson's time in office, and considering that Rishi Sunak has been talking up restoring trust in British Politics, his current situation with scandals are making those sound like empty, hollow words.

The whole situation with Nadhim Zawahi's taxes shot a rather nasty hole in his rhetoric, but the current bullying accusations against Deputy PM Dominic Raab is making the whole situation worse, and with both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss looking to return to centre stage of the political theatre, it's getting harder and harder to see just how long Sunak will be able to withstand the kind of pressure that caused both Johnson and Truss to be forced from centre stage by the long hook of political Vaudeville. You know the ones. When some variety act was out on stage too long in the old Vaudeville days, an incredibly long hook would suddenly appear from off stage, hook around the performer, and they'd be pulled off stage to bring their act to an early and ignominious end.

But now we have both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, both of whom were pulled off stage by politics's own version, now trying to return to centre stage and reclaim some spotlight for themselves. At one time, if you were pulled off stage by the long hook of political theatre, you retired from centre stage gracefully, and those that avoided it saw it coming and made their own exit before they got pulled.

Now it seems the hook has a new target. Rishi Sunak, and it seems that both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are trying to use it to force Sunak off stage, whilst at the same time making it seem like they are the best choices to replace him.

The thing is though, we're all fed up of this ongoing mess of political theatre shenanigans and would prefer a general election to be held, rather than having to watch the Tories go through yet another leadership election, and to be fair, I think there are plenty of Tories within the rank and file who would prefer a general election to the continued shambles that is the Tory party currently.

It's way past time that this political theatre production was shut down, and this current crop of hacks put out to pasture, to make way for a different production that just might be more popular than this one.