News reaches me of an exciting new opinion poll which indicates who will be the next prime minister. Clearly, Keir Starmer is the favourite at 8/11 on, but the second favourite is priced at a generous 10/1: Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson. If I was to abandon any remaining principles, I’d definitely be inclined to put 50p on Johnson.
For one thing, despite being deposed by Conservative party MPs, Johnson remains hugely popular with the senior citizens who comprise their membership. If he’d been on the ballot paper against Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak (remember him?), he’d have won by a landslide. Presumably, being a serial liar, an adulterer, a shyster and the worst prime minister ever, until Truss arrived, were not seen as obstacles. But given the clear signs that Truss and her wretched chancellor Laughing Boy Kwarteng are hopelessly out of their depth, who is to say that the man whose ambition to be King of the World might be the comeback kid?
As reckless predictions go, this is right up there with them, but what if Johnson is back in Downing Street by Christmas? It appears that Kwarteng, who laughed his way through the Queen’s funeral, has made a serious blunder with last week’s mini budget. The pound is in free fall and soon interest rates will be at horrendous levels, potentially causing a crash in the housing market. With inflation roaring away at 10% and potentially more, this country is entering Shit Creek at top speed. It is hard to believe that Laughing Boy and Truss will be able to stop it.
The Tory party is ruthless. It won’t fuck about if it thinks it lose the next general election, or even be annihilated in it, as seems entirely possible at the moment. If Truss and Laughing Boy appear to be electoral liabilities who have trashed the country, they will be out before anyone can say Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson. It won’t be pretty.
One thing is clear: this is a government that has been in power for over 12 years, not a couple of weeks, as its leaders suggest. Not only that, the new leader and her ministers are now enacting policies, like making the rich richer and letting schools and hospitals go to rat shit, which were not in the Tory manifesto, even if many of its MPs would have liked it to have been.
Johnson back in Number 10 by Christmas? Who knows? But if Truss carries on as she is, I can’t see her being there.
