It takes a rare mix of melodrama and disloyalty to stand outside No 10 and declare that the country is going to the dogs. But other Tory PMs blazed the way, writes Zoe Williams
it used to be quite abnormal for the political class to slate the entire country. “Problem families”, maybe; “feral youth”, quite possibly – but to talk about a nation sinking into chaos, as Sunak also did last week, describing “a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule”, while you are actually in charge of it … I don’t even know what to call that. What combination of melodramatic overstatement and strategic disloyalty could describe it? Whatever else it is, it’s damn peculiar.
The problem now is that everything is fucked, so it’s become increasingly difficult to victimise specific groups as being the reason, so they have to blame the lot of us. As the polls suggest this isn’t working and the majority of people, rightly, suspect it might be down to the party that has relentlessly torpedoed the country under the waterline because their rich friends want more cash or just from serial incompetence.
The problem now is that everything is fucked, so it’s become increasingly difficult to victimise specific groups as being the reason, so they have to blame the lot of us. As the polls suggest this isn’t working and the majority of people, rightly, suspect it might be down to the party that has relentlessly torpedoed the country under the waterline because their rich friends want more cash or just from serial incompetence.