On the sofa with Theresa and Philip

Theresa May isn’t doing debates in her Me Myself I election. She’s carefully kept away from anyone who’s ever met a real life member of the public and who hasn’t had their brains surgically removed and replaced with a Maybotadulationometer. Strong and stable. Coalition of chaos. Bloody difficult woman. She certainly won’t stoop to anything so base and low as being subject to questioning from a hostile media, although to be fair a media that’s hostile to the Conservatives isn’t generally allowed within a 20 mile radius of her Sainted Theresaness. For Theresa has ascended to a level beyond the mere tawdry justification demanded of politicians of a lower calibre. She’s beyond Thatcherism. She’s evolved beyond Blairism. She needs no ism, just an is, and we lesser mortals should consider ourselves truly blessed that such a transcendent being has deigned to walk on the surface of the same planet that the rest of us occupy.

However the problem with robotically intoning soundbites as though they were nuggets of eternal wisdom while taking the mobility cars away from people who can’t walk and demanding that women prove that their third child is a result of rape is that people begin to suspect that you have all the warmth and humanity of a parasitic wasp which has injected its eggs into the paralysed body of a caterpillar so that its councillor larvae can devour it from within. In order to at least put up some sort of facade that she is in fact a human being, the Therezoid conceded to appear on the One Show sofa along with her faithful retainer and hedge fund manager. Because everyone can relate to the cosy domestic lives of a politician with all the compassion of Attila the Handbag with a migraine and her multimillionaire banker of a husband. The two of them painted their daily lives as a picture of cosy domesticity that hasn’t been witnessed since Lucrezia Borgia opened up her dungeons for a glossy spread in Hello magazine and gave a poison of the day recipe for its cookery pages.

There’s give and take in our relationship, said Philip as Theresa glared at Matt Baker and Alex Jones as she wondered about the best place to insert her ovipositor. Theresa gives the soundbites and I take them. It’s hard to be close and cosy when your wife’s idea of whispering sweet nothings in your ear consists of her repeating strong and stable strong and stable until your eardrums start to bleed, but Phil did his best. We’re a strong and stable couple because there’s boy’s jobs and girl’s jobs, said Theresa, helping him out in the least convincing attempt at simpering since Lizzie Bordie was caught with a bloody axe. Boy’s jobs are things like taking out the bins. Girl’s jobs are things like crushing all opposition, destroying democracy, and declaring war on France, Spain, and Germany.

Theresa has wanted to be Prime Minister since she joined the Shadow Cabinet, trilled Philip, glad to be allowed out for once. Theresa gave him an icy look which said that he’d be putting himself out along with the bins. “I don’t recognise that,” she replied when Matt and Alex asked if it was true that she had wanted to be Prime Minister since she was an icicle, because what she did recognise that admitting that she’s been a scheming careerist since she was old enough to say “kick that disabled person’s crutch away and deport that migrant” probably wasn’t the look she was going for on the One Show sofa.

Still, at least the One Show presenters were able to drag a commitment out of Theresa that while we are most certainly going to leave the EU, we won’t be leaving Eurovision. Although I’m not sure how many points we’ll get, said Theresa. The answer to that is of course null points, since the UK was never particularly popular in Europe, and now after Brexit and Theresa’s declaration that the EU is trying to prevent her from ascending to her rightful position as supreme goddess and She Who Must Be Obeyed it’s as popular as a salmonella infested bridie in a fine foods contest.

By now the interview was going like one of those disastrous encounters on that Channel 4 programme First Dates where the attendees clearly can’t abide one another but they know that they’re contractually obliged to get all the way through to the end of the dessert course before they can flee the scene. The leaden silence filled the studio like Ruth Davidson being asked to justify the rape clause at FMQs. Matt and Alex desperately tried to inject some life into the proceedings, but it was clear that the interview had as much life and vivacity as Theresa herself. Her cold dead eyes bored into Matt and Alex as she considered how long it would take her larvae to consume them from within.

Let’s talk about shoes! Theresa likes shoes. And Philip likes ties. And jackets. And spoons. And lampshades. And flock wallpaper. And oh god oh god shoot me now. Here we are in the 21st century and British politics have been reduced to Matt Baker and Alex Jones asking Theresa May about shoes on a programme that’s more commonly used by minor celebrities with a book, a movie, or a new album to tout. All Theresa has to tout is the death of accountability and the demise of democracy.

As an attempt to make a cold and robotic Prime Minister seem a bit more human, the interview was a dismal failure. No one who didn’t already have a fully functioning Maybotadulationometer in their skull was going to think any more kindly of Theresa after this non-interview than before it. As an interview it was as hard hitting as a teddy bear on valium. We learned nothing from it. What we already know is that Theresa May is on course to be the most loathed Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher had her cultish acolytes too. What Thatcher did in Scotland was to transform a country which was pretty evenly divided on the question of devolution, and turn it into a country which overwhelmingly supported a Scottish Parliament. Theresa May will take a Scotland which is pretty evenly divided on the question of independence, and will turn it in a country which will vote for a sovereign Scottish state. That’s going to be May’s legacy, not interviews on the One Show that insult the intelligence of the voters.

This will be my last blog post until May 25th. I’m off to the USA for two weeks’ holiday – a trip which was booked long before Theresa’s Me Myself I election. Sam Miller (aka Macart) will be entertaining you in my absence and I’ll try and stick up a couple of other guest posts.  See yese in a fortnight!

If you’d like me and the dug to come and give a talk to your local group, email me at weegingerbook@yahoo.com

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