Right, so where were we when I took a break from this column-writing lark three months ago?
Let me see. Boris Johnson was PM, The Queen was on the throne, Liz Truss was just a joke not the punchline to every joke, you could still afford your mortgage and Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield were popular.
As I type this, under King Charles III and Prime Minister Sunak, Googling the words “how to downsize to a garret”, August seems a lifetime ago.
But as a wise man once said “the more things change the more they stay the same” and although there are different faces in charge, Britain is still being run by the most talentless, incompetent and broken government in living memory.
The Tories are now on their fifth Prime Minister in six years. Still refusing to admit that, after a dozen years of misrule which brought us an unnecessary, debilitating austerity, a crippling, divisive Brexit, a shambolic, costly handling of Covid and the catastrophic choice of Truss as PM, none of the problems are down to them. Just a rogue Wuhan lab technician, Vladimir Putin and Mick Lynch.
The only meaningful difference I can see between now and three months ago is that the Tories have gone from treating the British people with contempt to openly trolling us.
As we head into a long recession, inflation running at 11.2%, people choosing between heating and eating, and young people being told that, on average, they won’t be able to buy their first home until they are 37, a multi-millionaire PM with a billionaire wife tells us he feels our pain. Incredible.
The party of empty, three-word slogans that vowed to Take Back Control once they had Got Brexit Done has seen net migration soar to 504,000 annually. Good luck with those migrants finding somewhere to live, when, due to NIMBY Tory-backers only 38,000 new homes are being built here everyyear.
Railway workers, posties, nurses, firefighters and lecturers are on strike, protesting at the real wage cuts they have suffered over the past decade when bosses have been allowed to fill their boots.
Hospitals are on the brink of collapse as 4,000 patients spend more than 12 hours in A&E daily, our trains are as reliable as cheesecloth condoms, and we’re so short of prison places we’re sticking convicts in police cells.
Home Secretary Braverman openly channels Enoch Powell and Deputy PM Raab has more bullying claims against him than Draco Malfoy.
The UK economy is the only G7 country yet to regain its pre-pandemic output levels, we can’t make up the trade lost due to Brexit and we are forecast to have the lowest growth of any G20 country outside of Russia next year.
As Tory peer Michelle Mone is alleged to have made £29million out of Covid PPE, it’s revealed £6.7billion was lost to fraud, or errors, during the pandemic. Meanwhile the health minister in charge back then has just resurfaced after legging it to the I’m A Celebrity jungle.
Taking their cue from him, some Red Wall Tory MPs are jumping ship before they are kicked out at the next election.
And looking at the serious 13.8% swing towards Labour in Chester this week, many more will join them. I can’t wait for them to Get Exit Done.
It’s good to be back, folks.