The Cabinet of the Damned

By now an entire thunderstorm of electrons have probably been wasted by bloggers picking apart David Cameron's latest - and first - cabinet reshuffle. I'm sure many of them have correctly mentioned the unseemly lurch to the right that this unsightly new jumble of cocks represents, but just as striking as the right-wing what of it all is the what-the-fuck why of Cameron's new cabinet.

The last six months have seen the wheels come off the coalition, along with the brakes, the chassis and a significant part of the windshield. Since the omnishambles of the budget, the government hasn't managed a single week without some kind of scandal or fuck-up, from jerry-can-gate and Jeremy Hunt lying to parliament, right up to the recent parliamentary defeat over lords reform, which brought Lib Dems and Tories to the brink of open warfare. In short, the events of the last six months revealed this government to be made up of even more brashly incompetent, slitheringly venal pricks than even the most cynical of us had suspected, clownishly fumbling the dagger of power even as they tried to thrust it into each other's backs.

All of which left Cameron with two incompatible problems. First of all, the country is angry that their Faustian pact with cuts has not brought about the promised paradise of economic growth, and our rulers' constant ineptitude has left many with the impression that they couldn't run a bath let alone an economy. Secondly, even the government is discontent with itself - the Tory right (or Tory "mainstream" as the boggle-eyed, bulge-walleted extremists call themselves) always felt having to get elected at all was an imposition, and sharing power with mere mortals an outrage. The Lib Dems, for their part, seem aghast that their blood-soaked backstreet deal with Beelzebub somehow left them shortchanged. Faced with a choice between appeasing an angry country and an angry coalition, David Cameron has chosen to do the latter, and in doing so all but conceded that a Tory majority is impossible at the next election.

Let's not forget how this coalition came to be. The Tories did not fail to secure a majority, as many in the cornerstone group (a faction within the Conservatives populated by its most judderingly offensive pricks) would have it, because they neglected to focus on a "core vote" (read: mind-laceratingly right wing) strategy. That was the strategy they pursued in 2005, and it led them to defeat. As wince-inducingly insincere as it was, Cameron was tactically correct in 2010 to champion many policies which the majority in his party see as namby-pamby bullshit. It's easy to forget now, as we lurch towards the mid-point of this government's term, that the prime-minister spent much of his time in opposition courting greens, gays, and people who don't despise the NHS. The coalition came about because people (rightly) didn't trust the weaselly little sod, not because he failed to honestly articulate his true roadmap to disaster.

Now, in place of a faux-progressive Big Society conservatism, we have a cabinet that gloatingly shits on the very idea of centrism. Maria Miller, a woman who voted against gay couples adopting and a woman's right to choose is promoted from obscurity to the equalities department. Jeremy Hunt, who openly hates the NHS, is moved to health. Owen Peterson, who denies climate change, encourages fracking and believes banning fox hunting is akin to Nazism becomes the environment minister. All in all, it's clear that Cameron now sees the biggest threat to his tenure at number 10 coming not from the electorate, but from extremist elements within his own party.

Which, of course, makes him more dangerous than ever. One of the good things about elections is they force politicians to at the very least acknowledge that there is a urine problem while they piss all over their bedraggled subjects. Without even this to constrain them, this band of sociopaths is likely to spend the next two and a half years drowning us in their micturitions.

I don't want to end on an entirely bleak note, so I'll instead leave you with the sole dry spot in this ghastly vomitarium. There was little (though not quite nothing) for lib dems to feel appeased about in today's clumsy shakeup, making it not entirely unlikely they'll decide to scupper what's left of the project before too long. Equally, Cameron's obsequiousness to the right of his party are likely to be viewed as weakness by its beneficiaries, and the jackbooted little fuckbuckets may decide to thrust the knife in before too long. While all I can promise out of this potential melee is chaos, there are few outcomes that would be much worse than we have now.