Beyond the bottom of the barrel.

A stopgap and an observation based on someone else’s observation. Empty. And I voted for this lot.

It was ‘the wife’s’ birthday last weekend and being ‘the wife’ she insisted on having a BBQ with lots of people. Too many people. Far too many kids (4). It all went well in the end; one can only expect a husband to be on best behaviour in such circumstances and so, even at the most manic moments I kept a grip and when flustered drifted outside into the rain for a proper cigarette. The BBQ never happened beyond the quickly aborted lighting of a single, consensual fire lighter, which you could argue is about as successful a BBQ as I have ever been in charge of. Go me.

The next morning, slower and grumpier, I sat on the sofa as ‘Uncle L’ beautifully summarized the torpid careers of the people that run this country. Run or ruin, whichever. Listening to Radio 4 on the way to work on Monday it all made even more sense and so today’s cow pat on the forelock of stupidity is a very brief appraisal of our political system. In fact no, not our political system but the people that claim to have a firm grasp of it. Our very own beloved leaders. This lot make Laurel and Hardy look like Gladstone and Disraeli.

Boris Johnson. Status: Failed Politician. Straddling the boundary between semi-articulate, tousled buffoon and unforgivably crass and inappropriate non-event. Sending him to the Caribbean to look at the ‘Storm Irma’ damage was about as useful as sending Wayne Rooney round to fix Stephen Hawking’s computer. Boris has failed on so many levels yet retains an irritatingly assured and ruffly authority that could only come from an old Etonian. Which doesn’t mean he hasn’t failed miserably.

Michael Gove. Status: Failed Politician. A man so plummy he has opted to store his own plums in his mouth rather than tucking them between his clammy thighs. He is a high serving, low achieving sociopath who values his own opinion precisely as highly as someone has to when they know that no-one else values their opinion at all. He has managed to achieve next to nothing, unless you count accumulating enemies, and yet keeps on rising from the ashes, like a maggot ridden phoenix, presumably because more than 12 people in the country have heard of him and so he must therefore be a ‘safe pair of hands’, ‘an experienced colleague’ and a ‘respected member of society’. Which I imagine Harold Shipman was once also described as.

Theresa May. Status: Failed Politician. The woman who runs our country and represents this once great nation on the global political stage. Any second chances she had have long since been eroded away by her own cataclysmic incompetence. She has become (and looks like) a ghost of a ghost of a ghost. If she were a footballer she wouldn’t be able to score in a brothel.

David Davis. Status: Failed Politician. Who better to handle Brexit? Described as a ‘bruiser’ and somewhat ‘old school’ it should come as no surprise that when handling something as delicate and complex (and boring) as our departure from the EU these characteristics are not necessarily to be considered assets. In brief – a tired, memory of a prolapsed arsehole. Bull in a china shop doesn’t even come close.

Liam Fox. Status: Failed Politician. Has fallen from grace quite a few times thanks to his clear lack of bullet proofing or common sense. As with everyone on this list he should have hung his head in shame the first time around and let it stay there forever. If you can think of anything worthwhile that he has achieved then feel free to pop over and write all about it with a thick marker pen on my thumbnail.

Special mention – Philip Hammond. Status: Has almost qualified as a failed politician. Cocked up on his first stab at a budget and like so many rubbish politicians made the mistake of believing he was smarter than the rest. If he lived on a remote island with only a small family of under-educated, ill-informed puffins and a redundant shrew with learning difficulties for company he would still not qualify as smarter than the rest.

And the rest aren’t up to much either. It would be marginally better if we had someone in the wings ready to really take a grip but you and I know that the opposition will be just as ineffective. The British political scene is nothing more than a blocked toilet at the moment and it will need more than a coat hanger and a couple of flushes to sort it out. And we think Trump is bad!

G B Hewitt. 22.09.2017