He will get zero credit for good results and blame for all the bad. And hovering overhead is Penny Mordaunt
Pull yourself a pint of Night Nurse to wash down news that Conservative rebels who are plotting to bin off Rishi Sunak after the local elections apparently plan a 100-day “policy blitz” to turn things around. Hard to judge which would be welcomed least by the embattled British public: this 100-day policy blitz, or simply a 100-day blitz. These malcontents do, after all, hail from the section of the party that fetishises that period of the second world war virtually none of them were even born for, and must surely have at least toyed with the idea of simply bombing the electorate into jolly, rubble-clearing union under their esteemed leadership.
That’s not their only fetish, of course. They are also compulsively obsessed with regicide, and the belief that if they just got themselves one more new leader – just ONE more – then their lives would be perfect. Modern Conservative MPs are like shopaholics, but for leaders. The corridor outside the 1922 Committee room is lined with boxes of unopened luxury picks, while a significant number of their days are spent trying to return costly leaders they’ve already bought. These items were either too big, or too small, or not as described, or as described but they didn’t want to believe it, or simply that final box on the drop-down menu: “not for me”. This time they’ve bought one that’s bad at politics. And look, I’m not saying we’ve all done it. Although, the SNP has done it, as you’ll have noted this week – and indeed, pretty much all of the weeks Humza Yousaf was first minister.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
