ALL of us must have done something really bad in a previous incarnation, because we now find ourselves living in a reality where the next worst prime minister ever is going to be chosen by fulminating, red-faced, golf-club members who think David Cameron was a socialist.
They’ll be picking between a poor waxwork dummy of Margaret Thatcher brought to a semblance of robotic life by an evil incantation in the Daily Mail, and an out-of-touch and insanely ambitious multi-millionaire who makes you look at Elon Musk and think that he seems like a really grounded individual by comparison.
Last night, the pair of them went head-to-head in a debate in front of a studio audience of Conservative voters – so exactly like every episode of BBC Question Time then. Although the phrase "head-to-head" is deeply misleading as it implies that brains and joined up thinking were involved.
It was a bad-tempered and unedifying display. Truss displayed all the charisma and humanity of a broken toaster while Sunak seemed to think that debating means speaking over the top of his opponent and denying that the economic decisions of the past couple of years had anything to do with him. Both of them put on serious faces which were indistinguishable from trapped wind. All that this event did was confirm that neither of them are fit to be the next prime minister. Truss took a pop at Sunak's £3500 suits. What's even more incredible than wearing a £3500 suit is wearing a £3500 suit and it still looking like it's your dad's.
When asked if the recent chaos at Dover had anything to do with Brexit, both immediately replied "No!" without even pausing a heartbeat, which was not unrelated to the fact that neither of them has a heart. It was of course a blatant lie. The delays have been caused by the Conservatives' insistence that leaving the EU must also entail leaving the single market and customs union.
It is telling the default position of the Conservative Party leadership contenders is to lie. They will say anything in order to secure power. Brexit was created by lies and must be defended with lies. The Conservatives have to protect their voters from the truth – the people who demanded a hard border with France and who are now outraged that there is a hard border with France. Both Sunak and Truss claim that they want to restore trust in British politics and both seek to do so by lying through their teeth.
Lying has become normalised in British politics now, that's the real legacy of the past few years of Conservative rule. They did not achieve this unaided. The Conservatives lie because they know that the British media will collude in their lies, when it does not actively seek to propagate them further. If a semblance of honesty remained in the Conservative Party, either Sunak or Truss could have conceded that the long delays at Dover were at least partly caused by Brexit – they could have said that it was the price to be paid for the UK regaining its independence and that they were working to mitigate the problems. It would still have been a lie, but it would not have been the intelligence-insulting reality denial of that flat "No!"
The pair of them are running through the same farce again this evening. To save you the bother of torturing yourself by watching, Truss is going to claim that it's because Thatcher trashed her state education that she wants to channel Thatcher, while Sunak will make out that his wealthy parents who put him through one of the most expensive private schools in England and gave him the cash to buy a flat in London's West End when he was 21 were struggling, penniless immigrants living on the breadline. Both will agree on denying that Brexit is responsible for any of the UK's problems. And if the topic even comes up, both will agree that Scotland must put up and shut up. Their warped logic is that Scotland must be denied a say over its own future because they have messed up the present.
This is performative democracy. It has the form of democracy but none of its substance. We are all screwed, reduced to watching this farce play out on TV with none of us having a say.
This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.
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