Paul Kirkley: I’m exhausted – and it’s only February
So, here we are then. 2024. How’s it working out for you so far? A sense of creeping anxiety set against a background hum of existential dread? Or is that just me?
As an experiment to pass the long, dark days of January, I thought I’d try keeping a record of all the most deranged nonsense to emerge from the mouths and brains of our so-called government, and the wider ruling party. Not realising – naively, perhaps – that this would turn out to be a full-time job. But here goes.
The year got off to a flying start when, four years after we left the EU, someone finally identified one of those fabled, unicorn-style ‘Brexit benefits’ we’ve all been holding out for, as it emerged that Brits will now be able to buy… (wait for it) pints of wine. Which you might think is a pathetically small reward for all that political and financial ruin – but hey, who in modern Britain doesn’t feeling like drowning their sorrows in a vat of pinot grigio most nights?
On 2 January, Home Secretary James Cleverly – the living embodiment of whatever the opposite of nominative determinism is – told Sky News that asylum seekers were citing the government’s Rwanda policy as a deterrent during interviews. So that’s people arriving in the UK to seek asylum, claiming the Rwanda policy had put them off coming to the UK to seek asylum. Everyone clear on that? Good.
On the same day, former Conservative Party chairman Jake Berry MP opened a surprise new front in the culture wars by filming himself in a Tesco car park, getting annoyed by the fact there were already Easter eggs in the shops. Quite why he thought this was a sign of Woke Britain’s moral decay isn’t clear. Especially when we know full well he’ll be back in a couple of months complaining about Cadbury’s imaginary cancellation of Easter. Make up your mind, Jakey!
5 January, and Boris Johnson uses his £1m-a-year Daily Mail column to ask the question on everyone’s lips: “Why can’t every freeborn Briton burn his Christmas tree on Twelfth Night in his own hearth?” Just to remind you: this man was our actual Prime Minister.
7 January. Tories choose their candidate to fight the Wellingborough by-election after the resignation of disgraced MP Peter Bone. It’s Peter Bone’s girlfriend. Because of course it is.
10 January. Suella Braverman’s review of ‘woke policing’, commissioned to uncover acts of nefarious political interference in law and order, reports back with a damning example of such interference: Suella Braverman’s review of ‘woke policing’.
17 January. Conservative Party deputy chairmen Lee Anderson and Brendan Clarke-Smith resign from the government in order to vote against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill.
18 January. Former Conservative Party deputy chairman Brendan Clarke-Smith votes in favour of Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda bill. Lee Anderson abstains. Well that showed him.
18 January: Rishi Sunak, a non-elected Prime Minster, claims the Rwanda bill, which was not in the Conservative manifesto, is the “will of the people”. Somehow.
18 January (it was a long day): Former Environment Secretary Thérèse ‘let them eat turnips’ Coffey tries to shame Yvette Cooper during the Rwanda bill debate by claiming that she “can’t even get the name of the country right”. The shadow home secretary had, in fact, being talking about Kigali – the capital of Rwanda. #Awks.
22 January. Culture Secretary and South East Cambs MP Lucy Frazer messes the bed spectacularly on Sky News (more on that below).
22 January. The UK Prime Minister’s official X/Twitter/whatevs account posts a cryptic WhatsApp message claiming “something exciting is coming”. Sadly, it turns out not to be the news that the Prime Minister has found all those conveniently missing Covid WhatsApp messages. But thanks for reminding us of it.
Also 22 January: Cambridge Independent columnist Paul Kirkley declares he can’t take any more, and resigns his position as Government Nonsense Analyst, citing exhaustion.
Last spring, I noted in this column that my MP, Lucy Frazer, had made a “promising start” in her new role as Culture Secretary by, on the surface at least, actually appearing to support the arts, as opposed to constantly sticking in the boot in and trying to undermine them, like her predecessors.
Sadly, the Honourable Member for South East Cambs now appears to be channelling Nadine Dorries’ ‘Culture War Secretary’ approach to the job, if her already legendary encounter with Sky News’ Kay Burley last month is anything to go by.
Appearing on Burley’s show to explain why she’d asked the broadcast regulator Ofcom to investigate potential BBC bias, a stumbling Ms Frazer couldn’t actually come up with any examples of BBC bias, now you come to mention it, insisting instead that a “perception” of bias was “evidence” enough.
Or, to put it another way: “We keep telling everyone the BBC is biased, so now there’s a perception the BBC is biased, so we’d better investigate that.” I know ‘Orwellian’ is an over-used adjective, beloved of conspiracy nuts, but in situations like this, it’s hard not to think of that line from Nineteen Eighty-Four: “If all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.”
Still, it was great telly. (“Just to remind you, she is a King’s Counsel,” Burley reminded viewers afterwards – as close to stone cold murder as I’ve ever seen on live TV.) And it could have been worse – as government minister Huw Merriman proved when he appeared on Burley’s show the next day and, despite a full 24 hours having elapsed since Ms Frazer’s brain freeze, still hadn’t thought to try to find any examples of BBC bias. Instead, he flailingly hit out at Neil Buchanan – the inoffensive children’s TV legend of Art Attack fame (who, incidentally, spent his entire career on ITV).
How lovely to see David Mitchell filming in Cambridge recently. Because whose day isn’t made better by a bit of The Mitch (as he almost certainly doesn’t call himself)?
I did have to smile, though, reading the synopsis of his new BBC One detective drama, Ludwig, in which Mitchell plays a reclusive cryptic crossword-setter who assumes the identity of his identical twin brother, “a successful DCI leading Cambridge’s busy inner-city major crimes team”.
Setting aside the question of whether Cambridge even has an inner city, isn’t this just the most 9pm, British TV drama premise ever? Does it sound ridiculous? Yes. Will I be tuning in? You bloody bet I will.
Let’s hope Ludwig’s fictional beat doesn’t fall foul of the University of Cambridge, who’ve been accused of trying to ‘own’ the city’s name by taking out trademarks for certain goods and services.
Some of these make sense, of course: if someone’s using the Cambridge name to run academic courses from their shed, then it’s a bit of a ruddy cheek, quite frankly. But some of the other trademarks – including ‘stickers’, ‘bibles’ and ‘satellite telephones’ – are baffling, to say the least. So if you’re thinking of setting up a local business selling bible stickers for satellite phones – well, don’t say you haven’t been warned.
Read more from Paul every month in the Cambridge Independent.
