A Burnt-Out Cable

As the country allows itself a brief period of Schadenfreude over the impending final demise of Tumbledown Tessie, and begins the long slow business of resigning itself to whatever the nationwide rotten borough that is the Conservative Party membership may next choose to inflict, some may find it strange that the former Deputy Conservatives have chosen this day of all days to announce the forthcoming resignation of the dead-eyed warden's sometime Cabinet colleague, the Bullingdon Club's Minister for Mates' Rates. In fact, of course, such reticence is understandable enough. Aside from the residual need to follow their former masters in all things, the former Deputy Conservatives are undoubtedly aware that political resignations tend to stimulate an unhealthy urge to examine legacies. The liberal statesman who sat happily back during the bonfire of regulations that probably helped bring about the Grenfell Tower disaster; the statesmanlike democrat who accepted a knighthood for services rendered to the Bullingdon Club; the democratic liberal who toddled complacently through the lobbies time and again in favour of poor-bashing, migrant-baiting, NHS-flogging, wog-bombing and smirking, sniggering racism - this suppurating Picture of Dorian Orange is hardly the sort of façade the former Deputy Conservatives will wish to present just as their latest Unique Selling Point - Remain until the next rose-garden - seems at last to be fooling some of the people some of the time. Indeed, with a legacy of this magnitude, which did so much to elevate the Farage Falange and others equally fragrant to their present degree of public prominence, the only surprising thing is that Pigsticker Dave's little yellow fags felt sufficiently emboldened to make any announcement at all.