Confidence

 The pressure to document a world that appears so crazy it’s stranger than fiction is huge. I feel that you, my reader, would be disappointed if I didn’t try.

Our political system is broken. To us outsiders it looks like posh idiots playing a game, although it’s actually about who decides what happens in our lives.

Over the weekend things got desperate for the Prime Minister. No longer could he pretend that everyone loved him really. The card carrying conservative royalist public booed him on the steps of St Paul’s, surprising the commentators that were reporting live and enough of his own party wrote to Sir Graham Brady to trigger a no confidence vote.

In response, the Prime Minister told the world that he had no regrets about the Downing Street parties and would do everything exactly as he did before.

Nadine Dorries had a few gins and went on the telly to attack Jeremy Hunt.

Jacob Rees Mogg appeared in his grim reaper outfit and spoke only in Latin.

Boris called people in and started offering them jobs.

MPs went on Twitter to say things like, “Although it’s a secret ballot I want you to know that I’m voting no.”

This was particularly confusing. Is a no vote in a vote of no confidence actually a yes vote? Double negatives are always tricky. 

In the end 148 of his MPs said they had no confidence in him and he said that as 211 did it was time to move on. 

The moving on suggestion hasn’t worked so far, in fact it’s beginning to be one of those phrases that has been said so often it no longer makes sense. ‘Move on’ now sounds like ‘I’m lying’

Prime Ministers rarely lose votes of no confidence. The last was Jimmy Callaghan in 1979 and he only lost by one vote. 

There are more likely to be confidence votes now, as the rules were changed to stop leadership challenges. I suspect that if it were possible and someone had come forward to suggest a new leader the result would have been worse than it was for Margret Thatcher who won 204 votes compared to John Major’s 185. She still left, thinking that 52% of her party believing in her wasn’t enough. 

Boris Johnson is happy with 53% of his party believing in him without someone else to take over.

Meanwhile, none of this has helped the general public, some of whom played loud music (Mad World) outside Downing Street last night during the 10 o clock news.

This morning the Prime Minister is claiming that this is a very good result for politics and for government and I can’t help thinking that he’s not wrong but that’s only because I think it’s time the other side had a go. 

Politics is mad. The weather is awful, so here’s a puppy to make you feel better.