Suicide Squad

Rishi Sunak has doomed the Tory party to oblivion.

And they’re off!

Like a Grand National where all the horses are crippled donkeys, absolute pit ponies, and glue pot destined nags, the race is on to decide who will win the 2024 UK General Election. (Labour).

With just four weeks to go it’s a nail biting contest. (This is sarcasm)

Who will triumph? (Starmer) Who is facing ignominious defeat? (Sunak, obvs) and how will the result, whatever it is, change Britain? (Not much, we’ll all get poorer, while having the temerity to point out that a guy in a frock is a man, will quite possibly land you in prison).

To be honest, the first couple of weeks of the campaign were a bit of a snooze fest.

At one point there was a TV debate between Starmer and Sunak. But it was simply too boring to contemplate. So I skipped it.

I did see a couple of clips, which exhibited all the thrills and spills of a forty minute wait at a rainy bus stop. So I don’t think I missed much.

I hadn’t realised before that teeny tiny Rishi Sunak was quite so elfin. He’s like what Legolas from Lord of the Rings would look like if you searched him up on Google Gemini.

While Starmer whines away like a broken lawn mower, and has the dead, button eyes of the creepy other mother from Coraline.

Pre manifesto, we’re still at the ‘promise stuff we can’t deliver’, stage of the campaign.

Rishi Sunak has been promising that if he wins (he won’t) the Tories will definitely, properly, honestly this time, actually, really, do all the same things that they have been promising to do, but have not done, for the last fourteen years.

While Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been promising not to put your taxes up. But will definitely put your taxes up, because maths, despite being racist now, is still a thing.

In the first few days of the campaign most of the real fun came from the fringes.

Lib Dem leader, (Ted something?) Was falling over so often, that he was beginning to look genuinely presidential.

While a reinvigorated Green Party (Allahu Akbar!) seem like they might actually win a couple of seats (Inshallah). They currently look strong in Brighton Pavilion, Bristol Central, and Rafah East.

This cynical Gaia/Allah team up does have an upside. Under the moderating influence of the Greens, Islamists will no longer throw gay people off buildings. From now on it will be 300ft windmills. Which is much more environmentally friendly, so that’s a win.

We are forever being told that Britain is a divided country. Our happy hinterland rent asunder by the 2008 financial crash, Brexit, covid lockdowns, hate fuelled identity politics, mass immigration, and the ongoing cost of living crisis. But at last the British peoples, from hedgerow to highland, from castle to council estate, have come together in pursuit of a common cause.

The utter annihilation of the incompetent, useless, quisling, Tory party.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that no one voted for Rishi Sunak to become prime minister in the first place. And it doesn’t look like they are about to start now.

So why did he call this kamikaze election?

Well, we all know that Sunak’s actual election plan is to ditch shitty old Britain on July 5th, hotfoot it to sunny California on his wife’s private jet, and hang with the Tech Bros.

So my guess is there’s an intern job going at SnapChat, and if he waited until November he’d have missed the application window.

Also, Sunak, with his new Triple Double Lock Pension Promise is clearly targeting elderly voters. And if that is the case then a July election makes a lot of sense. Because the dwindling handful of remaining Tory supporters are now so old there is no guarantee many would make it past October.

Unfortunately Sunak lost most of the senior vote when he failed to attend D Celebrations in France.

World leaders and brave veterans assembled to mark the event. Frail, doddery, and confused. But it wasn’t just Joe Biden. President Macron and Olaf Scholz were also in attendance.

Sunak has been heavily criticised for his gaffe. And was forced to issue a tetchy apology. But it’s not really his fault.  When aides told him there was an event to commemorate thousands of military aged men swarming onto beaches. He just naturally turned up in Dover.

When it comes to the armed forces, Sunak keeps getting it wrong. His plan to bring back National Service has not gone down well with the youth vote.

Sunak tells young people that under the high taxing, economy crushing, wealth sapping Conservatives, they will never earn enough to own a house, run a car, or start a family, but the good news is, the Tories will train them up to be in the first wave of cannon fodder, when we inevitably go to war with Russia.

Well done my dude. Sounds like a vote winner.

The Tory front bench might be the forlorn hope of this election, but nevertheless they are out and about campaigning. And they deserve some credit for that.

David Cameron was captured being ignored on a Ring doorbell camera. No wonder the homeowner pretended not to be in. The last time Cameron went round delivering things, it was seven years of austerity and the most divisive, and ultimately pointless, referendum in British history.

And I say that as a committed Brexiteer.

I do feel a little sorry for Dave. Eight ago he was the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Now he is little more than an upmarket Deliveroo driver, distributing election leaflets, for pipsqueak Rishi Sunak, like an Eton fag. (Again American readers, not the fag you think it is.  Then again….) 

While Cameron’s own smarmy subordinate, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, gets to spend his days chilaxing with billionaire lizard Mark Zuckerberg, on the mega yacht he bought with all the money he made, harvesting Facebook users’ tears.

Funny old world innit Dave?

Meanwhile it looks like, absent a huge upset, unloved Labour leader Keir Starmer is going to coast to victory on the back of fourteen years of broken Tory promises.

Until then he is keeping schtum, refusing to say exactly what he’ll do when he takes power, lest it puts off the voters. (Not a good sign)

And so he is pursuing a ‘Ming Vase Strategy’, which essentially dictates he husbands his frankly unassailable lead as if it were delicate and priceless ceramic.

Never putting a foot wrong, Starmer must not let anyone on his team scare the voters by, for example, saying or doing anything divisive, insulting, racist, or stupid.

Though in a party which contains Angela Rayner, David Lammy and this week, Diane Abbot, that might be a tall order.

After spending six months adamant that Diane was purged, ghosted, erased, and expelled from his party, Starmer has spent much of the last couple of weeks pretending he is absolutely relaxed, totally chilled, and utterly coolio with our Diane running as a Labour Party candidate.

And why not? I love Diane Abbot. She’s funny, affable, and only occasionally says stuff which if voiced by a Tory would have them demonised by Labour pearl clutchers as the bastard child of Enoch Powell and Jim Crow.

But hey, when Diane says something a teeny bit racist, it’s usually only about gingers, gypsies, or Jews.

So no harm done. Right Sir Keir?

Starmer also tried to salvage some of the muslim vote from the Greens and George Galloway by following Angela Rayner’s lead, and announcing that once in power his government will officially recognise Palestine as a state, simply on the grounds that it self-identifies as one.

I’m beginning to notice a pattern here.

Despite Starmer keeping his policy cards close to his chest you know exactly what you’ll get with Labour.

Poorer.

The desperate Tory claim is that Labour will cost each household £2000. Of course it’s a made up, preposterous figure. Labour will cost us much, much more than that.

One organisation which won’t be short of money under the Labour Party, is the Labour Party.

Some have raised eyebrows that Just Stop Oil donor and government subsidy tycoon, Dale Vince, a man who has a vested interest in making your gas boiler illegal, has also donated £5m to the Labour Party.

But I don’t understand why there’s any controversy. JSO and Labour are pretty much the same thing. Anti oil. Anti capitalist. Anti growth. Anti choice. Anti working people. And pro elite.

This donation might also help explain why Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to decarbonise Britain’s electricity grid by 2030.

So in five and half year’s time then?

It’s pure nonsense. The numbers simply don’t add up. I know that and I’m not an economist, an engineer, an electrician, an accountant, or an energy specialist. I’m just an idiot sitting in a Gail’s by Regents Canal. And if it’s obvious to me, it must be obvious to them.

This isn’t an anti Labour thing. They’re all at it. Whatever party you belong to, please, for the love of the sweet baby Jesus, stop lying to us about the green stuff.

But back to the election. Putting aside my hatred of the Tories, there hasn’t been much to choose between the main parties.

Labour want to give children the vote, the Tories want to give old people all my money. It’s quite the choice.

Who would you trust most on the economy? Starmer or Sunak? To be honest I wouldn’t trust either of them to take the bins out.

Up until last week the battle between Sir Keir and Dishy Rishi (ha ha remember that!) had all the thrills and spills of watching two geography teachers fight over half a bar of Kendal Mint Cake.

That was until, no doubt peeved that he was not getting enough attention, Nigel Farage decided to throw his milkshake into the ring.

And thank God he did.

Farage immediately started making waves. During a launch event in Clacton, a seaside town that’s more left behind than one of David Cameron’s kids, he suffered messy abuse at the hands of an Only Fans model.

Which meant Nige was already winning. You usually have to pay extra for that sort of thing.

Look, I know that loads of my readers will vote Reform. I will probably vote Reform.

But I do worry this is little more than a Nigel vanity project. Right wing populism’s HS2.

We must destroy the Tories, great, I’m on board with that. But it’s not enough.

As I keep saying, Reform needs to be offering something long term, realistic and tangible to young people, rather than simply appealing to washed out, aging Thatcherites, like me.

Of course mass, uncontrolled, low skilled, immigration is adversely affecting young British people’s lives, whatever their background or race. But they have been brought up to see calls for any form of border control as synonymous with being racist, which of course, is the ultimate crime for their generation. So I doubt we’ll get very far unless we start changing the message.

I couldn’t bring myself to sit through the entirety of The Seven Way Debate either. Anything featuring Plaid Cymru or the SNP, gets a solid ‘No’ from me. But I did catch some highlights.

At least it was a (gin and) tonic to see Farage, Rayner and Mordaunt share a stage. Say what you like about them, and thank you, I will, at least these three, unlike Starmer and Sunak, are actual politicians, rather than glass eyed, ever hedging, technocrats.

You might not share their beliefs. But at least they actually seem to believe in something. It was also good to hear Farage tackle a subject other than immigration. Especially when he suggested some fundamental changes to our broken NHS model, rather than following the failed establishment formula of simply throwing more money at it, while banging on a pan.

This is a good sign.

Like many, The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson claims that voting Reform is riskier than crossing the Clintons, (not his exact words), because a vote for Reform is essentially a vote for Labour.

But that’s nonsense. Whatever happens we’re getting a Labour government. The only influence we can have, is helping shape the size of the Tory defeat.

The bigger risk is that the Tories limp on as a flaccid, One Nation, social democratic rump. A retirement home for centrist dads, simping wets, and Rory Stewart. Less a big tent, and more a circus big top filled with technocratic clowns, soft left wokists and joyless Remainers. This is an unacceptable outcome.

So I’m conflicted. At the moment I’m not even 100% I’ll even vote. I actually live in Keir Starmer’s constituency, so there really isn’t much point. If there was an actual Conservative Party to vote for, I’d probably vote for that, but there isn’t, so it’ll probably be Reform, or the SDP if it is standing.

I doubt I will watch the election results either. Obviously the fair, balanced and impartial BBC is a non starter, and the Channel 4 Election Night coverage, a show I have worked on during pretty much every election night since 2010, has a lineup which exhibits all the spice, fizz, and variety, of a rice sandwich.

Whatever happens on July 4th it’s clear that something needs to change.

Matt Goodwin recently characterised this as the ‘None of the Above Election’. Highlighting the lack of appeal of the main parties and leading players.

When I recently described this as ‘apathy’ I was pulled up by one of my commentators, (Hello P Wilson!), who pointed out that it was wrong to describe it as such. Instead he said, many voters were actively, not passively, disengaging from the system, because they saw no merit in either our politicians, or the system they represent. I think he is entirely correct.

The rise of populist parties across Europe, and of course the Second Coming of Trump in America is an expression of this active dissatisfaction with, and even despair at, this ‘business as usual’ and, ‘the grown ups are in the room’ politics.

Voters aren’t stupid. They can see they have been lied to again and again. Over covid, over the economy, over Brexit, over climate change and Net Zero. And of course, over immigration.

Regular people are becoming increasingly aware of how our governing class seems to be actively working against the needs and wishes of the majority.

How the progressive elites are funnelling resources, favour and advantage both to themselves, and to a privileged minority, a client base who they insist are blameless victims of the ignorance and prejudice of the hate-bloated masses.

They are becoming increasingly aware of the technocratic elite’s agenda to shift power away from democratically elected parliaments and politicians, and into the grasping hands of unelected ‘independent’ institutions, courts, NGOs, and supra national bodies like the WHO, the ECHR and of course the EU.

And how these courts and institutions are slowly, but systematically, replacing the freedoms we were all born with, with a series of rights and privileges which they control and administer.

Just think how your freedom of speech has de facto been replaced by the right of others, implicit in hate speech laws, not to be offended by the things you say.

We are constantly informed that the problems we face, from climate change, to our divided society, to the collapsing NHS, and even the failing economy, are ultimately our own fault. Because we, the bovine masses, are simply too fat, too greedy, too lazy, too wasteful, too xenophobic, too thick, too gullible, too drunk, too vapey, and too wedded to our cars, phones, holidays and heating to know what’s good for us.

The elites demand our cash, freedoms and future, to fix a smorgasbord of issues which they themselves have either conjured up from their own imaginations (yes, looking at you ‘transphobia’), or caused in the first place.

Because most, if not all of the problems we face as a nation are the result of too big a government, attempting to do too many things, with too much of our money.

And in a few weeks time, we will vote in another one.

Did those proud D Day Veterans, and their lost brothers in arms, really sacrifice so much, for an England such as this?

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Thank you for reading Low Status Opinions

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I am looking forward to hearing how the election is going for you in the comments. Are you, or anyone you know standing? I’d love to hear from you.

These self promotion bits are getting longer and longer so I’ll leave it there.

*One more thing. I wrote a book during lockdown. It’s a horror/comedy/satire set around 2016. I received some positive responses from literary agents, but in the end it was deemed a bit niche for a mainstream publisher. Fair enough. I’m thinking of putting it on Substack, maybe in instalments, or crowd funding a publication, or looking for a different established publisher. Any thoughts? Or can anyone help? Please let me know*

Best LSO