No One Expects...

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We've 'got a plan', or so the government keeps parroting, day in, day out, just on the off chance that someone might still be listening. Just what this plan might be, however, is a tad opaque to the man on the Clapham omnibus, or any other bugger else for that matter. Kemi Badenoch [Secretary of State for Business & Trade] said so again on Kuenssberg's talk show this morning, just to make sure we were all still on the same page; although I was doing a crossword at the time and so not particularly attentive to the content of the conversation; although I'm fairly sure she didn't actually elucidate just what this mysterious 'plan' was meant to be, or indeed meant to achieve.

At every available opportunity, the Prime Minister insists that 'they' [Labour - main party in Opposition and therefore not actually in government at the moment] have no 'plan', without specifying exactly what plan it is that 'they' don't have. It's all a bit worrying, not having plans. I mean, without a plan, what are you meant to do? Well, getting on with actually doing some governing might just be a start. The one government plan that we do however know something about, because it spends most of its time not actually getting anywhere, achieving bugger all, and providing unlimited content for news media and the commentariat, is 'The Great Rwanda Plan'. If Kafka were still breathing, he would be spitting feathers that he hadn't in his entire career dreamt up quite such a Byzantine, dystopian fantasy as this one. Joseph Heller never even got close with Catch 22.

Plan: Government pays a foreign safe(?) country [what was Brexit about, if it wasn't stopping Johnny Foreigner holding sway over these sceptred isles?] shedloads of cash - millions and millions - up front, to take planeloads of people seeking asylum in Britain, that Government don't really want to deal with. Government doesn't actually deport anyone to anywhere, because they're told that it might just be breaking the law in so doing. Government offers more money to foreign government, and then goes on to accept asylum seekers from that country instead, because it is deemed a dangerous place for them to be in. If you're looking for a thread of logic in this narrative, there ain't one.

If this entire travesty of a 'plan' were not so bathetic and pathetic by turns, nor so tragic in its treatment of vulnerable human beings, it would make a rollicking good plot for a surrealist sitcom in the manner of a Monty Python sketch of old. Roll on the elections, dammit! Second thoughts, The Spanish Inquisition might be a better idea, as they won't be expecting that...

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