New year, new you! That period of grace and self-realisation when you can become a better version of yourself. The person you would ideally like to be. Free from the defects and life choices that were dragging you down. At least, that’s how it used to be. Only this year the rules have changed. The only transformation now on offer is the one the government allows for you. The act of becoming has become an act of unbecoming.
We have now entered a new era. One that is predicated on the government’s own perfections. Its ministers incapable of error. The fault lies entirely in the rest of us. Those who have not yet appreciated the full glory of the Sunakered. We lesser mortals whose vision has been dimmed by our own internal darkened universe.
For there is only one true reality. And that is whatever the government wants it to be. Rishi Sunak is the sole arbiter of the truth. He alone is blessed with the knowledge of the divine. Received wisdoms of time and space have been dissolved. Sidelined into an alternate reality. All that is real is what Rish! says is real. Black can be white, up can be down. Depending on the prime minister’s mood. The one change required of all of us is to be open to this new state of consciousness.
This was James Cleverly’s message to Mishal Husain for his first appearance on the Today programme for 2024. A message of hope for a country that had for the last 14 years allowed itself to get bogged down in the trivia of a cost of living crisis, declining public services and countless tax increases. Now there would be no more broken promises because the past was a foreign country where these promises had never been made. We would be living in a rose-tinted permanent present configured to Sunak’s own command.
It is Cleverly’s blessing that he is the most able of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet lieutenants. The man who can be trusted to go down all guns blazing during any media appearance. Who can be relied on to do what he’s told. Even if he’s told to make a complete idiot of himself. He is what every prime minister badly needs. The ideal 11th in command.
It is Cleverly’s curse that he also happens to be not very bright. At times actively thick. Jimmy Dimly is one of life’s strivers. It’s what has made him so at home in the Conservative party. He doesn’t just accept his lack of ability. He works hard to be the stupidest version of himself possible. It’s why he’s so popular among his colleagues. He’s no competition. But it does mean his limitations are constantly exposed. Tuesday was no exception. Though whether the home secretary actually notices is another matter. He sometimes hovers on the brink of cognition.
Husain cut to the chase. Sunak was claiming he had cleared the backlog of small boats arrivals. And regardless of whether these were legacy cases or people who had come to the UK since June 2022, this was untrue. So why had the prime minister chosen to begin the election year with yet another lie? I mean, if he was going to distort the truth couldn’t he at least credit us with some intelligence and come up with a lie that wasn’t going to fall apart in five seconds?
Don’t worry your pretty little head, said Dimly, not being at all patronising and condescending. It was a new year with new rules, so he would try to explain it to her in words of one syllable. It was like this: the prime minister had said he had cleared the backlog. And if he said he had done something then he must have done it. Otherwise he wouldn’t have said it. Get it? Dimly smirked at his own faultless logic. This was going really well. People would talk about his time at the Home Office for decades to come. Yes, but not in a good way.
“In any case,” yawned Jimmy D. “Sunak had only committed to processing all the backlog claims.” He hadn’t, of course. This would have been another lie were we not in a new universe of the truth being anything Rish! said it was. Try to keep up, Mishal. Get with the programme. So it didn’t really matter where the thousands of people who had gone missing had got to as they had officially been processed.
Husain tried to get a steer on when the rest of the refugee arrivals might have their claims processed. Dimly openly laughed. That was the wrong question to ask. She hadn’t understood the maths. That was retrospective maths. He was only interested in the present or future maths. They were a completely different type of maths to conventional maths. A branch of algebra where addition and subtraction became meaningless. Weirdly, he managed to say all this without realising how much of an idiot he was making of himself. A kind of genius.
Moving on. How come he had called Stockton a shit-hole? “I didn’t,” Jimmy D insisted. “I merely called another MP a shit.” Er … OK, said Husain. If you say so. But everyone else heard you say shit-hole. “That’s not true. They can’t have, because I definitely didn’t say it,” snapped Cleverly, approaching Sunak levels of tetchiness. People could only have heard what he wanted them to have heard. His fantasy was the only true reality.
“That’s not how science works,” Dimly concluded as Husain dared to voice the truth. Bless. One of the stupidest men in parliament was now giving a lecture on the laws of physics on the BBC. Another collector’s item. Last, on to the date rape gag. “I apologised immediately after I was found out,” said Cleverly. And the fact that he had made the joke showed how much he cared about the issue. Apparently. Imagine the fuss if a Labour MP had said it. Or a serving police officer. One of the people of whom he was nominally in charge.
Husain chose to wind things up. Job done. People do seem to have the unfortunate habit of misinterpreting things you say rather often, she observed, before cutting him off. We were only two days into 2024 and she had already struck interview gold. Yet another morning for Jimmy D to forget.
John Crace’s book Depraved New World (Guardian Faber, £16.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy and save 18% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
