Boris Johnson managed not a word of praise for Rishi Sunak during a speech at a Conservative party campaign event at the National Army Museum in London on Tuesday evening.Boris Johnson managed not a word of praise for Rishi Sunak during a speech at a Conservative party campaign event at the National Army Museum in London on Tuesday evening.had called an election at all, but why he had chosen a six-week campaign. It wasn’t as if he had anything new to say in that time.
Tuesday morning was the perfect cluster-fuck. A threnody of national shame. Future generations will look back at Election 2024 in despair. How could we have sunk so low. The day dawned with a new Tory campaign video. A man waking up to yet another power cut. Albeit one where the electric alarm clock and the kettle are still working. Go figure.
Then there were the letters sent out to random voters round the country pretending to have been written by their future selves in 2044. Saying how they understood why they had voted Reform 20 years previously and that they had been badly let down by the voting system. Just bonkers. The first time the Tories have ever been known to make the case for electoral reform.
Coordinating all this – someone must have been – was Sunak himself. On a whistle-stop tour of what before this election were rock-solid Tory home counties strongholds. No one is even pretending Rish! is going to win any more. It’s all damage limitation. Here the existential futility has been ramped up to new levels.
You could see his former colleagues – Mikey is out of here, out of it – blanch. Don’t mention the war. The whole reason the Tories might finish third behind the Lib Dems is because of the last 14 years. Then he was rushing on his run. He might as well have said Labour would kill your babies. Worse, they would kill all dogs. They would make you homeless.. It’s almost as if the Tories want to lose this election by even more than predicted.