A pétard was, apparently, a small bomb, used
mostly for breaching the gates and walls of fortifications. When improperly
used, it could result in the user blowing him or herself up, or being ‘hoisted’
into the air. But the word originally derives from the Latin for fart, so being
‘hoist by your own petard’ really means being propelled in an unwanted
direction by an expulsion of internal wind. The latter, more literal,
definition seems, somehow, more appropriate for the situation in which the Tories
have found themselves in the last week. Twice.
The first was the fire
being directed
by some Tories at the Office for Budget Responsibility at the way in which its
interpretation of the numbers is restricting the ability of the Chancellor to ‘adjust’
the numbers in order to deliver a fantasy tax cut in today’s budget. Those with
an attention span longer than that of a gnat will remember that establishing
the OBR was a cunning plan by George Osborne to fix financial orthodoxy into
law by having an ‘independent’ group of experts consider proposed budgetary
changes and report on whether they complied with that orthodoxy. It was to act
as a deterrent to any Chancellor who thought that he or she could simply fiddle
the figures. It was intended, of course, to nobble the Labour Party if it
should ever be re-elected – the financial orthodoxy was very definitely a Tory
version of orthodoxy. It was never designed to constrain the actions of a Tory
Chancellor, yet that is exactly what it is now doing. Truss found a way around
this inconvenient obstacle by declaring that her mini-budget was not a budget
(Sunak is not the first Tory to attempt to redefine facts) in order to avoid the
requirement for an OBR assessment but, as things turned out, the absence of
that assessment was an even bigger problem as those in the financial markets
asked themselves just what Truss and Kwarteng were trying to hide.
The second is the backlash
from the extremists in the Tory Party to the proposals by Sunak to try and
outlaw extremism. They have realised something that Sunak obviously did not – that
in outlawing extremism he may end up criminalising a fair chunk of his own
party. Some might call it a form of poetic justice, others might see it as the
law of unintended consequences. Either way, it highlights the extent to which
the PM doesn’t understand the implications of his own words and actions – let alone
how far his party has fallen through the looking glass. Back in the days of
John Major, it might have looked like a deliberate ploy to rid himself of some
of the bastards
in the cabinet, but from Sunak it just looks like incompetence and an
astounding lack of awareness.
So, that loud
ripping noise you might hear from time to time is nothing to worry about. It’s
simply the explosive release of intestinal gases from a Tory Party busily ‘hoisting’
itself into oblivion. Almost reassuring.
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