Damaged Goods

It seems the new broom is just another old stick after all. Mad Tessie May has ejected the smirking schoolboy from the Treasury and replaced him with the empty suit from the Foreign Office, only to replace the empty suit with another smirking schoolboy who is, in addition, a liar, a wastrel, an incompetent and a buffoon. The blustering blimp Michael Fallon remains at Defence, and the Clegg-pledging frack-maiden Amber Rudd replaces Tessie herself at the Department for Detention and Migrant-bashing. A newly-created Ministry for Showing Johnny Euro-wog a Thing or Two About Britishness goes to the David Davis publicist David Davis, who will probably flounce off in a month or two if Tessie doesn't press the big red button. A new department for international trade, which will be in charge of negotiating new agreements once the EU has been successfully turned into a business rival, has been given into the charge of the vole-brained Liam Fox; so if nothing else, we can at least rest assured that Brexit will not harm Adam Werritty. Granted that, as a Conservative prime minister at the fag-end of British history, Mad Tessie does not exactly have the pick of the brightest and best; even so, most of the new blood is looking decidedly shopworn, and anyone who had hoped for a new sobriety at the top must be feeling a little bruised.