Step forward Liz Truss – a wicker woman consenting to the Brexit bonfire | Stewart lee

Im The wicker man (Robin Hardy, 1973), the key to the effectiveness of sacrifice is that Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodwoodward, 1930) voluntarily embraces the status of victim. And so Liz Truss climbs in her photo bin and walks with pleasure towards the burning wicker effigy of the role of chief negotiator for the exit of the European Union Brexit (formerly Secretary of State for the exit of the European Union ), and the poisoned post claims another scalp. Greater love has no man.

Lord Frost understood. Did he really quit his post as exit secretary because he no longer agreed with Boris Johnson’s general direction of travel which was to go from one leaky honeypot to another like a priapic bear? Or did Lord Exiteer realize that he couldn’t get out of the European Union in a way that would garnish his square head with coveted laurels? And so, unzipping the tent flap in the howling breeze of arctic public opinion, Lord Frost said: “I’m just going to the pub with Steve Baker’s European research group, a Brexit tough guy. I can be a while. Masks optional, of course.

The artfully cantilevered pivot of Good Friday, which discreetly softened the island of Ireland in 1998, fractures and ferments; angry fishermen and farmers fulminate in vain with moss and fertilizer, respectively; our brightest creative talents lower their life expectations accordingly as income, market access, postage rates, touring options and cross-border collaborations collapse; despite Michael Gove’s claims to improve EU environmental rules after Brexit, we are once again swimming in human sewers; once again we are known as the “dirty man of Europe” (at least until Allegra Stratton’s revelations about Boris Johnson’s love life surfaced); and a program to lure Nobel laureates to work in the buccaneer Brexit Britain has attracted precisely no takers in the world, making us the intellectual equivalent of the box office bomb of ‘Eddie Murphy in 2002, The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

Were Boris Johnson’s incompetence, dishonesty and lack of a coherent plan ultimately too obvious, beyond what could get him elected or eliminated, simply a useful fig leaf to cover the leader’s exit Exiteer from the eternal war against the ghosts of Europe? ? The false promises of the Brexit campaign can never be kept. It’s a bundle, like this gatefold vinyl print from Hawkwind Space ritual I ordered from a previously reliable French reseller via discogs.com, which appears undeliverable in the post-Brexit world. However, Brexit established the most right-wing government in living memory. Was that the idea from the start? Hit the head. Falls. Cry.

Faithful Red Wall voters, eager to level up and reap the Brexit dividends, will be delighted that Lord Frost Exiteer’s replacement Liz Truss voted in 2016 and was a co-author of the Conservative manifesto in waiting for 2012, Britannia Unleashed. Britannia Unleashed felt that “the British are among the worst idlers in the world … While Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music”. What’s a “Beatle”, eh Liz? And why do all footballers have long hair now, like girls? FYI, Truss, British football and British pop music were huge engines for your much-vaunted social mobility, and key elements of the soft diplomacy that briefly made Britain less universally hated around the world.

A Kurdish nomad on the Syrian border in 1988 bonded with me on his Def Leppard tape from Sheffield. With all due respect, the goat-herder tent dweller had nothing to say about the quality of British businessmen. And there is a generation of British schoolchildren who are morally inspired by Marcus Rashford, not vegetable mogul Andrew Bridgen, Igor’s homunculus of Brexit tough man Steve Baker, who enjoyed the defenestration so much in performative line from her snowflake master Nadine Dorries this week. (“Go ahead Steve! Bloody Nadine with her confusing shiny hair !! Catch her !!! Oh !!!!! I messed up my pants, Steve !!!!!”) Believe it or no, the kids don’t make collages of Bridgen’s stinky vegetable distribution center in Leicestershire, or Boris Johnson’s cheese and wine lock job without a party. They do Marcus Rashford murals.

To be fair, Truss didn’t write Britannia Unleashed alone. His co-authors were: Thoughtful woman thug Kwasi Kwarteng, Boris Johnson’s brutal Golem-enforcer, who spent a press tour in November trying to intimidate Parliamentary Standards Commissioner Kathryn Stone into resigning unaware that the CCHQ poll had already decided to ditch Owen Paterson, leaving Kwarteng to look like an obedient snap-on tool, both fanatically loyal and fatally loopless; Dominic Raab, who lasted four months as Exiteer’s predecessor of Truss, after revealing he did not know where Calais was, defended the Tories’ falsified independent online fact-checking service in the election. 2019 and floated on a paddleboard during the Kabul rout. , like the devil made flesh by Silvia Pinal in a film by Luis Buñuel; Priti Patel, who was personally bailed out by Boris Johnson when she broke the ministerial code for bullying and threatens child drowning regulations, Darth Vader pointing the Death Star at Alderaan; and Chris Skidmore, the Member of Parliament for Kingswood, only known because a 2019 secret investigation into the Westminster laundry service by Vice The magazine discovered that Skidmore had more slips in his pants than any other politician, a nominally determined quirk that Andrew Bridgen secretly envied. All that is horrible in the modern Conservative Party is embodied by the collaborators of Truss in Britannia Unleashed, which should make it a perfect fit for the flamboyant wicker woman frame.

Ashamed Britannia demands sacrifice. So far, the role of chief negotiator for the exit from the European Union has claimed five lives, six if you remember David Davis did it twice, having forgotten that he already had it all wrong once. . Nothing is achieved. Another body ignites, the carcass moved to another position in the cabinet. The peasants dance and sing, and wait for winter.

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