Friday, October 05, 2018

"Opportunity" cocks

The Tory party conference may have seemed like an improv episode of The Thick Of It, admittedly, but to say the Guardian's Marina Hyde was shooting fish in a barrel in writing about it would fail to do justice to her frequently delicious turns of phrase.

Her powers of observation are evident throughout, even in the apparently throwaway comments: "I saw lots of Conservative baby bibs. (Interesting to market your logo as something that specifically is going to get thrown up on)". But she's particularly good at mercilessly skewering the key protagonists in just a few choice words. Theresa May is "a Quentin Blake drawing of an unravelling postmistress", her policy agenda "now straight-to-meme", while her adversary Boris Johnson is described as both "the Cabbage Patch Draco Malfoy" and "the Great Twatsby": "Like several of the worst men of the age, he appears to deem high office the place to explore issues that really should be worked out via his dream journal". Philip Hammond? "Still delivers lines with all the rhetorical flourish of a reversing Securicor vehicle". Gavin Williamson? "Continues to look as though he took the rejection letter from Starfleet Academy pretty hard".

This is, however, very much laughter in the dark - as she reminds us at the end. Labour have somehow failed to make up ground on this catastrophically incompetent bunch of wankers, and both parties are now waiting for a crisis to hit - which it surely will, given the Tories' fuckwittery in negotiations with the EU and Jeremy Corbyn's apparent contentment to sit back and enjoy the ride as May drives us all off a big cliff.

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