Kemi Detached.

Time is running out for the Tory leader. And her party.

It’s official. British households, that’s you, are poorer now, than when Labour came to power.

Wow. Who would have thunk it?

Who knew that increasing taxes by £40 billion a year, paying half of the money raised to Mauritius so it will take those annoying Chagos Islands off our hands, then wasting the second half on a pay rise for public sector workers, and finally shovelling the third half out the door in ‘Climate Aid’ for Africa, (A continent which admittedly doesn’t have much going for it at the moment, but can at least boast a pretty nice climate) would make us worse off?

And yes. I know my numbers don’t remotely add up. But in my defence I’m an alumni of the Rachel Reeves School of Counting. So if my maths makes no sense, then no problem.

I’ll simply change my own imaginary ‘fiscal rules’ to make them fit, have a likkle ikkle fiddle with the old Curriculum Vitae, and hey presto! Suddenly I’m luxuriating in acres of ‘fiscal headroom’, plus I’m no longer a know-nothing armchair critic, but the Bank of England’s Super Top Cleverest Ever Economist!

According to The Office of National Statistics, Britain’s anaemic economy grew by a paltry 0.1 last quarter. Which, let’s be honest, is a remarkable achievement, considering the absolute beating it took from Reeves destructive, spiteful, innumerate, illogical, and ideological budget.

During which our robot voiced Chancellor took a gleeful sledgehammer to the productive parts of the British economy while stuffing ever more of the nation’s dwindling supply of gold (shout out to Gordon Brown) into the bloated, gulping, greedy, craw of the increasingly useless and parasitic public sector.

No wonder our economy is collapsing faster than Lizzo on a Fun Run.

Rather than help solve the cost of living crisis, Reeve’s budget made it much, much worse. Leaving regular folk to worry how they are meant to pay their energy bills, their rent, their food bill, or the train fare to visit nana in prison, now that she’s been locked up for misgendering a rapist on Facebook.

Nana you bloody bigot.

But not to worry. (Do worry.) Rachel Reeves has got a plan.

She says

"We are doing what is necessary to bring stability back to the economy, the planning system, regulation and pensions to encourage investment in our economy.

This is a basic category error. If there is one thing the British economy is not lacking, it’s ‘stability’.

Our economy is rock solid. Immovable, moribund, and static. It has plenty stability. The unwavering stability of a three day old corpse.

Even Reeves has realised that things are getting desperate.

And in a final attempt to save her job revitalise the national finances, she’s had what passes for a think, and come up with what, for any modern British Chancellor, is a groundbreaking, radical, outrageous, and frankly unprecedented idea.

She has announced she’s going to go for growth, cut regulation, and try and actually build something.

The thing is, no one believes her.

Because she’s lying.

In fact Reeves is already contemplating digging herself out of the black hole she created putting up our taxes.

By, you guessed it, putting up our taxes.

When it comes to growth and deregulation Rachel Reeves is like a guy who tells his wife he wants a threesome. Sure, the fantasy is exciting. A chance to spice things up a bit. To take a walk on the wild side. But if the missus actually agreed to entertain his mucky make-believe, he’d break into a cold sweat, turn green, and run for cover.

It’s the same with Reeves. Though for her, the threesome in question is a third runway at Heathrow.

It sounds like a game changer. A chance to spice up our stale economy. But it’s all just pillow talk.

There is literally no way Mrs Reeves, the Labour Party, or our sclerotic regulatory state, is ever going to let it happen.

Not that it really matters. For all their jaw dropping incompetence, brain dead policies, and anti British posturing , Labour are not worried about losing power any time soon.

They won’t have to face a national ballot until 2029. And in the meantime they have a Lammyproof foolproof plan to avoid ignominious defeat at the forthcoming local elections.

Angela Rayner has cancelled them.

Not all of them of course. That would be undemocratic and wrong. Just the ones in constituencies that Reform looked likely to win. So yeah. Nearly all of them.

The justification for this EU style suspension of democracy is that these constituencies are to abolished next year anyway, and replaced with new unitary councils.

No. I don’t know what a ‘unitary council’ is either. But you can be pretty sure it’s just a fancy name for yet another layer of bureaucrats, generously pensioned pen pushers who will be tasked with spending the two days a week they deign to turn up for work, not collecting the bins, not policing the streets, and not fixing the potholes.

Maybe I’m being unfair. Focusing on the negatives. I bet if you enjoy spending your council tax money on trans pedestrian crossings. Being fined for driving your mum down the shops. And attending Hamas themed Zumba classes at your local library. You’re going to be very happy with the changes.

In her defence Rayner has claimed that Labour is

‘not in the business of holding elections to bodies that won’t exist and where we don’t know what will replace them. This would be an expensive and irresponsible waste of taxpayers’ money’

Hang on. I think I need a sit down. Suddenly the Labour Party is concerned about wasting taxpayers money?

This is the same government that with a straight face announced it’s going to spend £22 bn on a ‘carbon capture’ scheme. A bonkers, magic beans technology that has never worked. Will never work. And would not make a dent in Britain’s, let alone the world’s, carbon emissions, even if it did work.

Which it won’t.

So yeah. Labour. The party of penny pinching and probity.

Labour might be running scared of the upstart Reform Party, but it is very relaxed about the Tories.

(You remember them. Blue party. Lots of leaders. All useless.)

It’s hard to believe that the Conservatives could be even less effective out of power than in it. And yet here we are.

The party has become invisible under Kemi Badenoch. Currently languishing in third place in the polls behind Labour and Reform.

I hold my hand up. For a long time I believed Badenoch was the answer to the Tories problems.

I was wrong. Now she is the Tories problem.

You’d think that attacking this Labour administration would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Especially since, in addition to all the big stuff, the disastrous budget, the Chagos Islands fiasco, Two Tier Keir, the ever failing NHS, plus everything Ed Miliband has said, and everything Ed Miliband has done, Labour has already had a transport minister who has resigned over a stolen mobile phone, an anti corruption minister who resigned over a corruption scandal, and has just appointed a health minister (Quick reminder: That’s someone who is officially now in charge of the nation’s health.) who genuinely believes that humans should be allowed to identify as llamas.

But Kemi can’t even find the barrel.

Every Prime Minister’s Question Time is like standing outside a kebab shop on a Friday night, watching a drunk pick a fight with a wheelie bin. She flails about, woozy and unfocused, lost and incoherent, missing her mark every single time. While the hapless bin just stands there. Blank and immobile. Being rubbish.

Badenoch is the soggiest of damp squibs. She seems ineffective, ill prepared, lazy, feeble, and weak. While coming across, now she has the leadership, as haughty and hectoring, arrogant, smug, and pretty unlikable.

This is not a winning combination.

Now the party, which we are forever being informed is ‘the most successful election winning machine in history’, is having rings run around it by five gammon blokes from the local rugby club.

If the Tories are a day tripper on Clacton seafront. Reform are a seagull. Swooping in to nick their chips.

Sensing she’d better come up with something, anything, or risk joining Rachel Reeves on the back benches. (It’s inevitable. I give Reeves until mid March) Kemi has finally been prodded into action, and has made her first big policy announcement.

Predictably on immigration. Badenoch promises that under the next Tory government. (I know, I’m laughing too.) any foreign worker who overstayed their visa would be kicked out of Britain.

Er….no they wouldn’t.

This make believe scheme is as credible as Reeve’s silly ‘plans’ to build a third runway. Thanks to our activist judicial system and its weaponisation of the ECHR, it’s currently impossible to even kick out rapists, murders, Rolls Royce riding serial burglars, or Albanian gangsters whose kids are extra fussy about chicken nuggets.

So what hope is there of the courts agreeing to send back low skilled workers who have overstayed a visa? Literally zero. There’s more chance of the BBC doing a no holds barred exposé of Starmer’s family life.

Badenoch also wants to extend the time needed for immigrants to qualify for Indefinite Leave to Remain from the current five years, to ten.

Sounds good on the surface. But here’s an idea. Why not extend the qualifying period for ILR from five years, to never?

You come to the UK, sponsored by an employer to do a specific job. The job finishes, your contract ends, you go home. That’s what they do in other countries. Why can’t we do it here? Why do we have to reward someone who has worked in a low skilled job in a care home for five years, or even ten years, with the right to claim benefits, subsidised housing, and free NHS medical care, for themselves plus their dependents, for literally the rest of their lives?

Am I being unreasonable, heartless and cruel? I don’t think so. But please, you’re welcome to tell me why I’m a monster in the comments.

The problem for the Tories, is that even they acknowledge they had fourteen years in power and did literally nothing with it.

Their defence for the decade and a half of inaction, torpor, stagnation and drift is that an ideologically captured civil service, a biased media, and activist courts, quangos and NGOs blocked their every move, obstructed every scheme, and negated their every policy. Fair enough.

But if this defence of their wasted years is valid. Then what exactly is the point of the Tories? If even they concede their inability, when in power, to get anything done, why should anyone vote for them now? And if they are too weak, powerless, and hamstrung to ever change a rigged system, why does the party even exist?

Perhaps instead of failing, yet again, to land a blow at PMQs, these are the real questions which should be occupying the minds of the Conservative Party, and Kemi Badenoch.

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