It goes on. Painfully; extraordinarily, the crassness of it all being weirdly relentless – almost as though These People are intent on wearing us down.

Building regulations ‘opened up’… in clear, bullish, provocative contradiction to the water crisis. Deals cut for the Barclays; reams of contracts reeking of the same, foul whiff, succeeding the awesomely flagrant track-and-trace and the (useless) protective equipment deals. Remember those? Remember the bee-line to donors and pals? Remember your cash being systematically pilfered? It goes on.

Johnson’s lazy, assumptive greed may have been at the epi-centre of this historic low: but his Cult of Endowment has spread. The modern Tory seems to generally believe that the rules don’t apply to them. They are without conscience and they recognise no authority but their own ability to push things through.

We can’t let their dumb selfishness, their raw, idle corruption and their hatred of others drag us into the kind of desensitized fog that suits their purposes. We really are (and really have to be) better than that.

Zoom in. Our rivers – the arteries of our landscape – are choked with shit. It’s a perfect symbol for the era of Johnson and Gove, Truss and Patel, Mone and Sunak, Braverman and Zahawi and Rees-Mogg: the time when shamelessness, greed and the worst, most indulgent kind of uncaring trumped the authentic work of government.

Add to that list the names of Shapps, Jenrick and Coffey and we have a pret-ty clear picture of the Deeply Crap People who have constituted the party-in-power for more than a decade.

They were murderously incompetent through the pandemic. They were more obviously corrupt around the sickening Covid Fast Lane (for sidekicks and schoolmates) than any government of our lifetimes. Only #theveryworstofus could turn international but also deeply personal family tragedy into a business opportunity for the clan. Only that Johnson tribe (and its flunkies in the media) could squeeze filthy lucre out of that moment.

But it goes on. Via inevitable subterfuge – the disappearing stories, featuring Mone, Harding(!), All That Covid Money – or through the whole, wretched, perennial Tory donors thing. Environmental standards sliding yet again (despite the outrage around our rivers!) because the Tories need to payback the developers. Sunak the smiling void implicated in a zillion convenient outcomes for his family, for the people he needs. Crass, mindless gifting of advantage to industries or individuals that back the Conservatives – even these Conservatives. Just how stupid do these clowns think we are?

It’s possible that the wearing-down of our intelligence (and therefore our resistance) is strategic. The Soul-Dead Robots advising the Tories *really might be* sensing, in their foul, ‘pulse-gathering’ systems, that pressing the Small Boats button or the ‘look, Wokes!’ button hard or often enough might see these charlatans through.

We have to be better than that. I think we are. We have to gather ourselves; protest; use the law – even when the process feels tilted against us. Not only must these Tories go… but they must be held to account.

Pic from Reuters.