These Wounds I Had On Crispin's Day

Well, that didn't take long, did it? As rivers flow into the sea, and as hosepipe ban horrors give way to snowflake damage fury, and as dogs return to their vomit, so the modern Conservative Party reverts inevitably to its downhill, hysterical, barking self. The No Longer Nasty Party hasn't been much in evidence since May 2010; the Not Awfully Bright Party has made a spectacular resurgence via the Werritty affair and the ramblings of that mad old cat lady at ConFlabRahRah 2011; and now, after a mere year and a half in office, Daveybloke's retoxification of the Conservative brand has been brought to its glorious completion with a good old-fashioned eighty-strong rebellion over Europe. All the venerable symptoms were present, including the Daily Mail attitude to facts (one speaker claimed, along with much of our fearless Press, that the debate was taking place because of a nonexistent e-petition), right down to the plastic-doll-eyed presence of the noted Thatcherite pod-creature, John Redwood. Forsaking the casually contemptuous "fullest support and confidence" pose which worked such wonders in ridding him of the vole-brained Dr Fox, Daveybloke this time went for the nuclear option in the form of a three-line whip, and suddenly re-discovered his obligations under the coalition agreement which has been so conveniently set aside during the recent maniacal efforts to twizzlerise the NHS; and thus it came about that, in the midst of a severe economic crisis, a war or so abroad and the alienation of an entire generation at home, the party which is run from Belize, Washington and New York's Little Australia decided to have a good old Bullingdon punch-up with itself about "Britain's future as an independent country".