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Transcript

Episode 153

Hello and welcome to a very mini summer bonus Partly Political Broadcast, the podcast that assumed not much would be going on in August and is now eating it’s audio hat, or at least saving it to eat for after a No Deal. I’m Tiernan Douieb and as Liberal Democrat leader and tall gnome Jo Swinson says she doesn’t want a No Deal Brexit but won’t back Labour’s plans to form an emergency government I think its great that she’s making a stand for Remainers everywhere by reclaiming cakeism from the Brexiteers. I do understand, Swinson doesn’t want Brexit, she just wants everything back to how it was before the referendum, specifically in the time period between 2010 and 2015.

Yes here was me thinking that while this show had a short break, which it’s still on, nothing much would happen, but instead because we have a government now lead by a flesh popcorn maker aka Captain Fatberg Boris Johnson every day of the summer recess has brought something new and awful in from the garden. Johnson’s cabinet choices seem to have been modelled on the Mos Eisley strategy, with more flops than Jessica Biel’s filmography. I mean, what on earth is dentures with eyes Gavin Williamson doing as Education Secretary when all he can teach children is that you can endanger national security and still be in government? The only possible thinking behind Johnson’s choices must be that by putting such completely incompetent failures in such important roles it will really encourage the public that any idiot can be in government so they may as well give it a go. So far Boris’s promises have been the sort of populist noises that you’d expect to find from a child who’d won a school election on the basis of 3 days weeks and hotdogs every lunchtime despite no possibility of it happening. There’s the promise for 20,000 more police officers to not quite replace the 21,000 officers that the force has lost since 2010. Hey, I guess Boris is just making sure there’ll be enough of them to surround Westminster when the riots start. Where will the money for that come from? Well either the magic money tree has reappeared or maybe all of those officers will be sent out to reclaim laundered money hidden in all the luxury flats Boris signed off on when he was London mayor. Then there’s the £1.8bn for the NHS which again isn’t anywhere near the £4bn a year it needs to survive. It’s like trying to put a plaster on a broken leg and assuming that will do, which is likely what will be standard procedure in a few months time. And the £1.8bn? Well we were told that was new money but in the way that if you take a tenner from one pocket and put it in the other, its new to that pocket but essentially you’ve still only got a tenner. So taking money from elsewhere in the government’s budget and giving it to the NHS is as helpful as having a skin graft on your face made from the skin on the other side of your face. Which again, will probably be standard procedure after October 31^st.

Then there’s all the promises about, as new Home Secretary and inspiration for Maleficent Priti Patel, increasing stop and search as it works, which is odd as all research says the majority of them don’t. But that’s about the same success rate as the cabinet so you can see why Patel backs it. The Home Office have also announced a knife free policy that involves putting warnings about carrying a knife on chicken takeaway boxes. Yes the lazy sterotyping that Boris is known for is now country wide. I hope they do this across the board and have warnings about cocaine on wraps in the City of London and racism free dispatch boxes in Westminster.

Which brings us to Brexit. The new cabinet all had to sign pledges that the UK would be out of the EU by October 31^st and you know Boris Johnson, if it’s in writing that means it’s definite. Unless that writing is on the side of a bus. Or in the Telegraph. And so the last few weeks have been a flurry of no deal threats but promises that Johnson doesn’t want that, followed by an insistence that its remainers fault if it happens or that the EU have refuse to negotiate which is probably just because they’re on recess and Johnson was too lazy to translate the out of office messages they get. Plus £2.1bn is being put towards no deal preparations because why invest in, say, social care, when you can ensure that the outcome no one asked for or needs and isn’t necessary requires a ton of money to be spent on beans, gas masks for people living near the M20 and protection for no deal advocates who may experience health issues from people pointing and shouting ‘told you so’ at them 600 times a day. Johnson has hired what if Morty from Rick and Morty was really ill Dominic Cummings as his special advisor, the man who was the campaign director of the Vote Leave campaign, was found in contempt of parliament and is pro-Brexit on account of how the UK leaving the EU will allow us to work with Jeff Bezos to build a base on the moon. Yes, really. That’s exactly the sort of sensible mind we need in Number 10, someone who’ll churn out the masterplans of villians from 80s comic books while having to sit in the Costa near Westminster tube every time Boris has to go to work. But this means its impossible to tell if we’re careering towards a no deal because Boris is an idiot and doesn’t know how not to, or if this is all a bluff that we’re careering towards a no deal in order to get a better deal from the EU that we won’t get and Boris is an idiot. Either way, several of Johnson’s backers are disaster capitalists that are already profiteering from the pound plummeting again, faster than the integrity of British politics, so it’s a win for Boris either way.

So how to stop it, for those that want to? Well various ideas have been touted. Green Party MP and the only person in the UK who still calls them joss sticks Caroline Lucas called for an emergency female cabinet, which no, isn’t the sort of furniture Jeffrey Epstein had in his home, but instead as Lucas put it, the top 10 female MPS who would combine together to form an government of national unity. Except that she only picked white women, some of whom are backbenchers, meaning it was less of an emergency female cabinet and more an exercise in how to progressively discriminate like its 2019. See also Johnson’s cabinet containing only BAME MPs who’d actively deport their families if they could find the paperwork to lose.

So now to plan B which is Labour leader and kiwi fruit with glasses Jeremy Corbyn proposing that he lead a caretaker government so called as it pops in to clean out all the garbage then leaves again. It would be on a strictly time limited basis, you know, like most things and then they’d call a general election. This idea has so far been backed by The SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, Tory MP and Star Wars name Guto Bebb and various Tory rebels are considering it. But not by the Lib Dems as Jo Swinson has suggested instead that a temporary government should be lead by either the father of the house & nicotine pillow Ken Clarke or the mother of the house & only person in the UK to still call it the Abbey National Harriet Harman, or maybe the two of them together in a weird sitcom style situation like the Good Life but without the poor family. And look, it is perhaps a good question as to what sort of government of national unity Corbyn could be in charge of when his own party are more divided than a class on fractions being taught on the border in Cyprus. But Swinson keeps saying she’s out to stop Boris and Brexit but isn’t keen on helping do it with Labour, then what exactly is her plan? Is it a long game where she stops Johnson by letting him age, die or get bored then claim it was a Lib Dem victory? No one knows but get bored, age and die does feel like the Lib Dems version of the Trainspotting monologue.

Labour are likely to put down a no confidence motion as soon as parliament returns on the 3^rd of September, yes, just as this podcast returns because yes, everyone hates me, and if Johnson doesn’t win that vote, if there isn’t a clear alternative to lead the country like a caretaker government, then the government gets to have another go within 14 days and if that doesn’t work then it’s a general election which will happen at least 7 weeks after, leaving a week and 2 days to sort out what to do before October the 31^st. Yes Halloween this year is going to be scary in the most absolutely boring of ways.

In other news Mark Gatiss character and former Conservative MP and former Change UK MP Sarah Wollaston is now a Lib Dem MP, which feels like she’s done the political version of the opposite of a gateway drug. From cocaine to medicinal weed to some sort of over the counter mild painkillers. Wollaston said she did it as many of her constituants are horrified at the Conservatives shift to the right, as she put it. Which is odd as they were always very on the right, but perhaps they budged over a bit more to make room for Change UK?

Dog waste bin backwash and leader of the Brexit party Nigel Farage has again failed to do nationalism properly and attacked the royal family while giving a speech in Australia. He insulted Prince Harry, Meghan Markle and said the late Queen Mum was overweight and chain smoking. Basically he’s angry because one stopped wearing their Nazi costume, one isn’t white and the other is old, rich and white but died before she could vote for his party.

And the oh they’re still alive party UKIP have a new leader who looks like Wayne Rooney with a shit toupe and is called Richard Braine. Now many have pointed out that this means his name is literally Dick Braine which is hilarious but its distracted from him saying that he wants to establish UKIP as the ‘far-moderate voice of common sense’ which is an incredible sentence that manages to contradict itself in just six words. How can you be far moderate? That’s like saying you want to be idiotically sensible, carelessly responsible or the most shit good. Good luck Braine on becoming the far-moderate mute-voice of rare-common sense nonsense’ you fucking idiot.

INTRO

Hello! I know I know, you weren’t expecting to hear me during summer and I’m sorry to ruin your hols, but it turns out politics has also ruined the silly season by insisting on being the stupid stories too. Saying that, there was a headline last week that simply said ‘Helter Skelter in cathedral is a mistake’ and I think that may have been one of the best things I’ve ever read. But this is just a quick mini episode as I’m off to Hong Kong tomorrow and if China invade while I’m there this will be the last podcast for a while as any future episodes will all be about  Xi Jinping Thought and only available on Weibo. Hopefully that won’t happen, and instead the podcast will be back on September the 2^nd but I thought you’d probably need a few gags to keep you going – and yes, I know I’ve missed loads and yes, I promise to go through the whole new cabinet properly with descriptions when it returns – so I thought I’d get a short rant in and then treat you, or perhaps punish you with a bit of a recording from my Camden Fringe shows I did earlier this month. Thanks to those of you who came along, it was really lovely meeting some listeners there and so very appreciated. The shows were a sort of work in progress mess as I realized I really have too much in my head and no real energy to coherently link them all, but I’ve included an edit of a few bits that I think make sense. So I hope you enjoy.

In the meantime please do spread the word to get more people subscribed in time for the ParPolBro return in September, do donate to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro or patreon.com/parpolbro and do please give the show a lovely review on iTunes or Podbean or scratched into the side of that van that’s taking up a two car parking space outside your flat and has done for three weeks. Oh, just me? Ok. Oh well. And I’ve got some excellent guests lined up but also any suggestions for what you want to hear in the next run of podcasts please drop me a line at all the usual channels and I’m thinking about maybe some sort of live podcast towards the end of October as everything kicks off, or doesn’t. Would you fancy that? Let me know if you can cope with hearing all this but in real time. I promise to do some bits in 1.5 speed for those of you that are used to that.

Right, here’s some more of me, doing some more about Boris fucking Johnson:

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