Ten Blue Tories lying to be PM

'Ship of Twats' by Cold War Steve

There were eventually just ten blue Tories lying to become PM. Other wannabe PMs had failed to get the required number of Tory MPs to sponsor them. They are quite a gruesome bunch and perhaps this explains why Mrs. May had been able to hang on for so long, despite making no visible progress on Brexit, housing for Grenfell Tower tenants, housebuilding, NHS improvements, climate change, education, homelessness, community care, railways, universal credit, knife crime, drugs, or ever directly answering anyone's question at PM's question time.

The ten who went into the first round of the ballot of MPs included 5 present ministers, 4 ministers who had had to resign from Mrs May's cabinet and an ex-Chief Whip. Much to everyone's surprise Boris Johnson had a landslide victory in the first round ballot, attracting 114 votes with Jeremy Hunt second with 43 votes from the electorate of 313 Tory MPs. There were no surprises that Andrea Leadsom, Esther McVey and Mark Harvey had fallen at the first ballot and when Matt Hancock, a man who can change his opinion at the drop of a hat, withdrew so that he could join Boris's gang you began to realise that the game's a bogey.

The remaining five candidates proved in the Channel 4 debate that they had little to offer in terms of ideas or practical solutions to the Brexit conundrum. Rory Stewart won all the plaudits for being honest and speaking to the whole nation and not just the elderly and exceptionalist caucus of avarice and haughtiness that masquerades as the Tory party members. Unfortunately, they are the electorate and do not take kindly to  those suggesting that improving public services is just as important as tax reductions so Rory Stewart will be the next one of the six blue tories to accidentally fall.

Meanwhile, Boris is in hibernation, hidden from TV audiences and journalists by such luminaries as Gavin Williamson, Chris Grayling, Ian Duncan Smith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Priti Patel, Sir Michael Fallon, Esther McVey and Liz Truss. Oh, my giddy aunt, could you ever wish the support from such a  distinguished elite of duplicitous MPs, only Michael Gove is missing. Most of them have form as Ministers who have had to resign and have ambitions to return as part of a Boris cabinet. If Boris succeeds in becoming PM and ever get himself into a pickle, he can be confident that his cabinet full of liberators will all want to be Brutus. Meantime the rush to jump aboard Boris's Brexit lifeboat is truly love in the time of Cholic.

For the rest of us, what a totally demeaning time to be British. One of the very few upsides is the humour provided by  Cold War Steve, who has produced a bizarre collection of collages to capture the machinations of Brexit with an angst-driven acuity.

October 31. Grayling's last stand and Bojo's finest moment