The fragile fantasist of the Vale

Ben Wildsmith

The upcoming slaughter of the Tory Party will be biblical in scope and doubtless provide many hugely entertaining moments as some of the world’s most entitled incompetents are handed their backsides by a public that can simply take no more.

The scale of their desperation was illustrated by today’s ‘revelations’ about Angela Rayner. Apparently, Labour’s deputy leader *might* owe … wait for it… £1500 in tax from the sale of a council house 20 years ago.

Really? That’s the level of gotcha the ‘natural party of government’ is now relying on to save its skin? Duw, Duw, it’s almost pitiable.

On a personal level, the annihilation of these clowns is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’ll be nice to escape from the relentless bigotry, corruption, and cruelty that they’ve made their trademarks.

Conversely, though, I am paid to take the piss out of people, and it’s been a simple pleasure to do so with the cavalcade of antisocial chancers that have been advanced over the last few years.

The Lakota Sioux speak of a time, before the coming of white colonialists, when pieces of gold the size of a baby’s head lay around the Black Mountains undisturbed.

For a satirist, coming across Jacob Rees-Mogg or Jonathan Gullis is an 1849 Gold Rush moment. They’ve been halcyon days.

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M4 relief road

Most distressingly of all, though, Torygeddon is almost certain to send Andrew ‘Real Ting’ Davies back to his former life as a bucolic Alf Garnett, lecturing cattle about the M4 relief road.

What am I going to do then? The fragile fantasist of the Vale failed this week to censure Nation.Cymru as, once again, the authorities were obliged to explain that his hurty feelings weren’t just cause for censoring a free press.

As with all things Tory nowadays, there’s a richly comic aspect to Mr. Anti-Woke being told to suck it up like a big boy, but also an unsavoury and worrying undertone.

Scrolling relentlessly through Twitter/X today as I do every day in place of a fulfilling life, I came across a thread about adjustments to the state pension.

As we know, the pension in the UK is far below that in comparable European nations and, as such, tends to provoke a fair bit of fury amongst those trying to live on it.

'Illegal immigrants'

Amongst the comments there were several from Welsh pensioners who were convinced that ‘illegal immigrants’ were all entitled to £400 per week in Wales.

Well, we know where they’ve got this from, don’t we? For months now Davies has been claiming, without context, that asylum seekers are entitled to that sum from the Welsh Government.

The reality is that a soon-to-expire pilot scheme that tested the viability of a universal basic income offered that amount to youngsters leaving care. It didn’t explicitly exclude care-leavers who were seeking asylum.

As it happens, I vehemently disagree with this scheme. Care-leavers face unique challenges in life, so they are wholly unsuitable as a control group for a pilot scheme of this nature.

The results are, I believe, unlikely to shed much light on the wider viability of UBI. So, there you have a reasoned objection to the policy that Davies and the Conservatives could have used with very little difficulty.

Distorted

Instead, however, they have chosen to push a version of the truth that is so distorted as to resemble a lie.

That version has embedded itself in the consciousness of enough people that it goes unchallenged when brought up as a howl of pain about the paltry and insulting pension arrangements under which our retirees struggle.

The difficulties faced by asylum seekers themselves are, of course, of no interest whatsoever to Davies and his ilk. They are merely fodder for a narrative.

The ignoble death throes of Tory Britain will doubtless see new depths plumbed on a weekly basis. Like many of you, I scarcely know when to laugh and when to vomit.

Flags & Bones by Ben Wildsmith is available to order from Cambria Books.