The Rocky Horror Show...

The stock platitudes of the Conservative & Unionist Party of Great Britain can be numbered thus: everyone else plays politics, whilst they are serious, restrained and conservative. Everyone else seeks to tax and spend like there's no tomorrow, in order to fund what they [the Tories] perceive to be a 'big state' economy, whilst they believe implicitly in a small state; low on interference with the 'natural' forces of the markets - Adam Smith, et al., yet again - somehow imagining that their distorted vision of utopia will magically appear before them with little to zero effort on their part. Governance requires input from government, otherwise we might as well run with the kind of anarchy that the neoliberals actually desire in the furtherance of their own personal gain.

The markets - always in a very precarious state of balance - have reflected this in recent days and weeks: the real Masters of the Economic Universe have spoken, and slapped the Conservative Party in its collective face for its hubris and lack of any clear monetary or fiscal plans: their illusory cult of British Exceptionalism based on our past history of colonization & exploitation is evaporating before their eyes. And as for their tragicomic and woefully mistaken belief that shutting the doors on the outside world would have that world beating down those very doors and pleading us to get back in bed with it, well, as our new King put it: 'Dear, oh dear...'

The problem we've seen recently, in what to be honest has been a mind-curdlingly weird, perplexing and frankly disturbing eight years in British politics, is that the Tories themselves are completely out of kilter with what they perceive to be their natural constituency, and have allowed a crew of half-arsed libertines to rule the roost in order to pander to the populist vote and keep them in power to further their venal ends. In doing so, they have succeeded in very rapidly upsetting the fragile tectonics of the world economy: demonstrating my broken record point that there ain't no such thing as a free-market economy, and that libertarian loons like Re-Smog are just posh versions of Del Boy, trying to get one over on the rest of us, and keep their pockets full of loot.

And now, Smog's arch-loon-mate Bozza thinks - and has as I write this has actually got his 100 tin soldiers lined up for yet another stab at Waterloo - that he'll just march back into Number Ten and continue the partying where he left off just weeks ago, followed by the miasmic cloud that he himself had generated. I doubt they've even yet stripped the PM's flat of that bloody wallpaper. One thing's for certain, though, is that things will not be the same - if he does win - this time around. Even Sir Roger Gale - not exactly a noted revolutionary - has said that he would desert the party and stand as an independent at the next election on the return of the Clown. Speaks volumes.

Indeed, the very sniff of Bozza and his cloud returning to office - even before he raced back from his hols in the Caribbean at the double - set the markets and gilt yields a-quiver yet again, with the UK's credit rating now marked down from stable: Defcon Two for our economic credibility and a short distance from global pariah-hood. If he does manage this comeback, I predict it won't be for anywhere near as long as he thinks and hopes, and that the Conservatives themselves will be cast into political purdah for a very long time, along with Johnson's so-desired £10M/year after-dinner income. Bring it on, you chumps.