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UK politics so much funnier than fiction, comedy writer finds it ‘hard to match’
By Rob Harris
London: A friend in Australia texted this week with an observation from afar about the current state of British politics.
“Liz’s book sounds even more fun than her premiership,” he quipped.
It was starting to seem a distant memory, so it was a nice reminder when Liz Truss released the memoir no one was asking for about her 49 days as British prime minister in late 2022.
Liz Truss and her husband Hugh O’Leary enter Downing Street for the first time in her leadership.Credit: Getty
The book, Ten Years to Save the West, is peppered with anecdotes from her time in public life, but is pitched as a warning against authoritarianism and the threat from “fashionable ideas propagated by the global left” – which she blames for her demise.
But don’t let that put you off. The book is also full of comedy gold. Truss complains that when she moved into Number 10 Downing Street it was infested with fleas from Boris Johnson’s dog, Dilyn – which left her “itching” for weeks. She concedes that had it been an Airbnb, she would not have rated it well. She also complains that she was left to “organise my own hair and make-up appointments”.
Later, as Truss faced “the prospect of a catastrophic economic meltdown” following her mini-budget, she writes that she called Jeremy Hunt to ask him to take over as chancellor of the exchequer, but he initially rejected the phone call as he didn’t recognise the prime minister’s number.
Little wonder Armando Iannucci, creator of the brilliant political satire The Thick of It, says he won’t bring back his hilarious and spookily close-to-the-mark show for another season because his scripts would seem dull in comparison to the ridiculousness of real-life politics.
“Every time a stupid political event happens … people write to me and suggest I bring back The Thick of It,” he wrote. “No. Absolutely not. I now find the political landscape so alien and awful that it’s hard to match the waves of cynicism it transmits on its own.”
Truth is stranger than fiction: Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker in the political satire The Thick of It.Credit: BBC
Sometime later this year, Britain’s Conservative Party will head to an election after 14 years in power. The polls are predicting a catastrophic wipe out, but as it is likely there are still months to go, the political commentariat are stuck in the rut of having to pretend it’s still a two-horse race.
While Truss was doing the media rounds to talk about her book, the headlines were focused on yet another scandal surrounding bizarre behaviour by a Tory MP – the kind that might have seemed too far-fetched if pitched by Iannucci.
The Times newspaper reported that Mark Menzies – a Tory MP who is no stranger to controversy – had called an elderly local party volunteer at 3.15am one morning last December, saying he was locked in a flat with “some bad people” and needed £5000 ($9500) as a matter of “life and death”.
The woman refused and instead called his office manager, who later stumped up the sum – which had risen to £6500 – from her personal bank account, and was later reimbursed from a campaign fund paid for by donors.
It wasn’t Menzies’ first rodeo either. In 2014, he stepped down from his government role as a trade envoy after a Sunday Mirror investigation found he’d paid a teenage Brazilian escort for sex and drugs. He has also been accused of getting a dog drunk, but a police probe was dropped and he denied wrongdoing.
This is just the icing on the cake for the current mob of Tory MPs, who have brought about a level of scandal and sleaze for the ruling party akin to the final years of John Major’s government.
In the past year or so, almost a dozen have either quit or been sacked amid bizarre wrongdoings. Earlier this month, William Wragg resigned from the party after his role in the so-called Westminster honey trap scandal. The MP and former chair of the public accounts committee admitted to leaking the personal phone numbers of MPs to a scammer on the dating app Grindr.
Scott Benton was also recently forced out after he was caught up in a newspaper gambling sting, in which he offered to ask questions in parliament, leak a confidential policy document or call in favours from parliamentary colleagues on behalf of fake gambling industry “investors”.
Chris Pincher resigned as an MP when the Commons’ standards committee recommended an eight-week suspension from parliament over allegations he groped two men while drunk. Former prime minister Boris Johnson was said to have dubbed him “Pincher by name, Pincher by nature” before giving him a job.
Who can forget senior MP Neil Parish resigning after admitting he twice “accidentally” watched pornography in the House of Commons while browsing for tractors?
And then there was David Warburton, an MP since 2015, who was sacked from the party following allegations in The Sunday Times he had harassed three women. The newspaper also obtained pictures of Warburton apparently posing next to cocaine.
Rob Roberts was sacked as a Tory MP after he sent lewd texts to a 21-year-old intern inviting her to “fool around”.
This is all barely scratching the surface, but you get the drift. Johnson’s so-called Partygate scandal and Truss’ economy-wrecking cameo were really just the tip of the iceberg. The Tories’ problems run as deep as imaginable. They are not serious people.
They are heading for a defeat you can’t help but feel is both self-inflicted and richly deserved.
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