All posts tagged: Crace

Election diary: Tory campaign going exactly as planned, say Tories | John Crace

Election diary: Tory campaign going exactly as planned, say Tories | John Crace

Published by skeptic

It’s just over a week since Rishi Sunak got soaked in the rain as he called the general election. Since then he has forgotten that Wales didn’t qualify for the Euros, paid a visit to Belfast’s Titanic quarter and been photographed under an exit sign. Richard Holden, the Tory party chair AKA Baldrick impersonator, has insisted that the campaign has been going exactly as planned. God knows what might have happened if it hadn’t. Then the Conservatives started pumping out policies as if there’s no tomorrow. National service, the pension triple lock, a ban on Mickey Mouse degrees, and driving penalty points for flytippers. If they’re all such good ideas, it makes you wonder why the Tories didn’t do any of them in the last 14 years. Not that any of them are likely to happen, because the chances of the Conservatives winning the election are currently near zero. A sign of how bad Rish! thinks things are is that almost all his campaign visits have been to what used to be Tory strongholds, to …

Natalie Elphicke’s queasy welcome shows Labour will turn no one away | John Crace

Natalie Elphicke’s queasy welcome shows Labour will turn no one away | John Crace

Published by skeptic

Some things you just don’t see coming. Defections from the Tory party may be very on trend: just last month it was Dan Poulter. Or Dan Who? to his friends. But when Natalie Elphicke took her place right behind Keir Starmer on the Labour benches for prime minister’s questions there were open mouths on both sides of the Commons. Penny Mordaunt had to do a quick double-take. Could it be? Surely not. It was. She dashed to the speaker’s chair to warn the prime minister. Elphicke is no ordinary defector. Not some Tory wet like Dripping Dan, who was so centre-right, one nation that he may as well have been Labour anyway. Natalie is about as far to the right as you can get. Not only that, but with an unpleasant backstory too. A woman who defended her former husband, Charlie, the previous MP for Dover, until she inherited the constituency after he had been convicted of three charges of sexual assault. Not the best of looks. Natalie was even suspended from the Commons after …

Tories take refuge in fantasy as local election drubbing becomes clear | John Crace

Tories take refuge in fantasy as local election drubbing becomes clear | John Crace

Published by skeptic

Spare a thought for Richard Holden. While every other senior Tory politician had sensibly chosen to lock themselves in a darkened room with a bottle of scotch and a syringe full of heroin, the Conservative party chair took one for the team. A long stint on the airwaves from soon after the polls had closed through to the following morning. It’s hard to know whether this was bravery or complete stupidity. He could be like the Japanese soldier found on a Pacific island in the 1970s who didn’t know his country had surrendered in 1945 and was still trying to escape capture by the enemy. Rich is one of the last believers in the Tory party. A man who reckons Rishi Sunak is just days away from a stunning renaissance. Just one more tax rise disguised as a tax cut. Just one more token refugee voluntarily taking a bung to fly to Rwanda. Then all would be well. The gratitude would come flooding in. Let Rish! be Rish! The evening had begun with Holden in …

Who is the vainest of Whitehall? George Galloway just shades it | John Crace

Who is the vainest of Whitehall? George Galloway just shades it | John Crace

Published by skeptic

There’s none so blind as politicians. Listen to them talk and you’d be forgiven for thinking they had been blessed with a surfeit of human kindness. They were driven into politics by a compulsion to serve the little people. They had just too much love to give. Overwhelmed by a sense of duty. It must be exhausting being that perfect. Only that’s not even half the story. A veneer to make themselves feel good. Because what really drives them is an overweening vanity. Scratch the surface and you will invariably find a massive ego. An entitlement to rule. A belief that they alone have all the answers. That they can sort out the problems everyone else can’t. Truly they are uniquely blessed. A self-fulfilling conceit that only gets worse the more powerful you become. Because then you have any number of toadies brown-nosing you everywhere you go. Flunkies hoping to profit from your reflected glory. So once in government you never stop to wonder if you might be wrong. That would be a category error. …

Humza Yousaf forgot the rule: leaders who want to look tough look stupid | John Crace

Humza Yousaf forgot the rule: leaders who want to look tough look stupid | John Crace

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Be careful what you wish for. It’s hard not to feel a scintilla of sympathy for Humza Yousaf. On a human level, if not a political one. For well over a decade the SNP had ruled more or less unchallenged in Scotland. Free to do whatever it liked, though not, ironically, the one thing on which its existence was predicated: making Scotland independent. The UK parliament was in no hurry to grant a second referendum, much to the SNP’s displeasure. The first had been labelled a once-in-a-generation event. The SNP saw it differently. Generations pass more quickly in Scotland apparently. So when Nicola Sturgeon decided to step down as leader a year ago, Yousaf must have thought that he was inheriting her personal fiefdom. The last king of Scotland. Only it hasn’t worked out like this. Rather, it has all turned to dust. The questions about the SNP’s handling of party funds persist. Peter Murrell, Sturgeon’s husband, is facing criminal charges. The fate of the motorhome remains unclear. Nor have things worked out so well …

Struggling to control his anger, Tetchy Rishi went full on aggressive-aggressive | John Crace

Struggling to control his anger, Tetchy Rishi went full on aggressive-aggressive | John Crace

Published by skeptic

Almost every politician has their tell. The USP that betrays them. For Rishi Sunak it’s in the terse addition of “right?” to the end of sentences. “My patience is running thin … RIGHT?” “No ifs, no buts … RIGHT?” “There’s a clear contrast between Labour and my government … RIGHT?” This is the warning sign that the prime minister is yet again struggling to control his anger. The despairing cry of the Sun King who can’t believe that the Fates have yet again chosen to cross his path. At Monday’s Downing Street press conference on the Rwanda policy we may just have reached peak Tetchy Rishi. Not so much Snippy Rishi as outright Furious Rishi. There was barely a sentence that didn’t end in an accusing “Right?” Not so much passive-aggressive as full on aggressive-aggressive. You could see it in his eyes. The contempt for journalists who dare to hold him to account. God knows how he feels about the voters who appear to have turned their backs on his party in their millions. He …

‘Five-year-old on acid’: Liz Truss’s Ten Years to Save the West, digested by John Crace | Liz Truss

‘Five-year-old on acid’: Liz Truss’s Ten Years to Save the West, digested by John Crace | Liz Truss

Published by skeptic

I was impatient to get going. Plans had been made. I picked up my phone. “ChatGPT. Write me a memoir in the style of an excitable five-year-old on acid.” “We’ve only got 10 years to save the west,” I declared solemnly. “We’d have had a lot longer than that if you hadn’t become prime minister,” replied my husband, Hugh. My rock, as always. I was on the way to my audience with the queen, deeply aware of the huge honour I was doing her. There was fog over Aberdeen. Taking no chances, I parachuted into the grounds of Balmoral. “Good morning, Your Majesty. The Trusster is at your service,” I said. “We really are scraping the barrel now,” the queen replied. “My first prime minister was Winston. Now it’s come to this.” I felt overwhelmed by the solemnity of the occasion and will never forget her parting words to me; the last words she ever spoke to a British prime minister. “Don’t forget to close the door behind you.” So typical of her lifetime of …

Tory MPs limp into PMQs after finally accepting their fate | John Crace

Tory MPs limp into PMQs after finally accepting their fate | John Crace

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There’s something to be said for a prolonged death. It means you can get your grieving in when the patient is still alive. All the more important when that patient is you. The Tories have known the game is up for some time now. They can read the polls as well as the rest of us. They are facing electoral wipeout. It’s not totally out the question that they might even be the third largest party after the next election. None of this comes easy for Tories, born to believe that they are the party of government. So there has been plenty of tears as they process their grief. First the denial. This can’t be happening, they told themselves. These things don’t happen to people like them. It is against the natural order. So they dictated their own reality. One of their choosing. The methodology of the polls was wrong. Of course it was. Then came the anger. Messy and raw. Torrents of unprocessed rage. How dare voters even contemplate kicking them out of government? …

Wishing John Crace and the NHS a good recovery | Heart attack

Wishing John Crace and the NHS a good recovery | Heart attack

Published by skeptic

Thank you to John Crace for this article (‘Is this how I die?’ John Crace on his terrifying heart attack, 21 March). It has allowed me to start the process of accepting that although my two heart attacks on Christmas Day 2022 were mild and sorted by some stents, they were still serious. Surrounded by men on my ward who were recovering from, or waiting for, various heart bypass procedures, I felt almost like a fraud – after all, a stent is at the lower end of the scale, or so I convinced myself. I have laughed off the concern of loved ones and friends, and dined out on a good story that involved me thinking I had a bad chest infection on the day, accounting for my chest pains and breathlessness and symptoms that in general did not conform to my view of what a heart attack should be like. Even my definition of pain was at odds with what I thought heart attack pain was. It seems, however, that others had contemplated what …