She's a May-niac, May-niac on the floor! in Brexistential Breakdowns

Lotta mileage to be had out of her name. Every cloud, eh?

So we have a new Prime Minister, for the low, low price of absolutely zero general elections, and as if that wasn’t a bargain enough we’ve also got a new Government, free of charge! Naturally, any incoming Prime Minister has to sort out their party and start dishing out government positions like slices of cake at a birthday party, and today we’re going to be looking at a few of the chubbier kids scrambling to get at the plate. A full list of all the cabinet members is available here thanks to the BBC doing all the legwork for me, but I can’t be arsed dealing with everybody for the sake of brevity I’ll be focusing on a few of the more significant and notable members of the May government. So, to quote D-Generation X’s entrance theme, let’s “break it down!”

Who? Philip “Statler and Waldorf made flesh” Hammond

MP for? Runnymede and Weybridge
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
New position? Chancellor of the Exchequer
Leave or Remain? Remain (but only because it was cool)
Gimme dirt! Former Goth Philip Hammond is a noted Eurosceptic and would’ve initially voted to leave in order to negotiate a better deal for the UK, but after Cameron’s pre-referendum renegotiations with the EU he was evidently satisfied enough and so jumped ship to the Remain camp. He’s also shown his ability to change his mind when it comes to gay people: initially voting against things like lowering the age of consent, then abstaining from voting for a bunch of things like the Marriage (same sex couples) Act, before finally starting to vote for more gay-friendly legislation. One hopes he’s had a genuine warming of the heart towards the LGBT community, but it’s more likely because he got in some shit for comparing gay relationships to incest, and has since had to suck it up and accept that, y’know, gay people are people too it’s now the law.

That’s not the last time we’ll be discussing gay rights, by the way…

Anyway, Hammond’s promotion to Chancellor of the Exchequer was probably the most predictable, as he’d served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury - the position directly below Chancellor of the Exchequer - twice whilst the Tories were in opposition, and is also absolutely wadded, having a personal fortune of about £8 million thanks to his stake in nursing home developers Castlemead. Evidently, the man understands business, as he could see that loss of access to the free market would be “catastrophic” and after his appointment continued to insist that “We need to ensure access to the EU single market for our financial services industry in London” - a position even Germany thought was “reasonable” - thus it’ll be something he’ll continue to negotiate for even though he’s announced that we’re leaving the single market. Given that access to the single market generally comes with the caveat that you’ve also got to have freedom of movement for EU nationals Hammond’s got his work cut out for him, and that’s possibly the understatement of the decade right there.

Who? Liam “stupid like a” Fox

MP for? North Somerset
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Sat at the back of the class.
New position? Secretary of State for International Trade
Leave or Remain? Shout! Shout! Get us all out!
Gimme dirt! Holy shit, where do I begin? Firstly, he was the MP who had to pay back the highest amount of any MP in the Conservative party during the expenses scandal back in 2009, a lesson he refused to learn as he’s continued claiming ridiculous expense returns, notably this one in 2013 where he claimed back three pence for a journey of about 100m. Given that he couldn’t control military spending during his time as Secretary of State for Defense either, opting instead to axe about eleven thousand members of the armed forces to bring the numbers down, his appointment to the newly-created position of Secretary of State for International Trade may seem questionable, but a pattern does emerge when considering where some notable Leavers ended up: it appears that the pro-Remain May is definitely of the “you wanted this, you can deal with it” mindset, and that’s reflected by her cabinet appointments.

Also, you may remember Liam Fox from the Tory leadership race, as he was the contender who was eliminated after the first round of voting (and therefore the most unpopular candidate), and I believe I briefly mentioned that he’d already had to resign once before. Well, you see, Liam Fox resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he’d allowed heterosexual life partner businessman and lobbyist Adam Werritty to accompany him on several official business trips, along with a bunch of other stuff like letting him stay at Fox’s second house rent-free, and going on holiday together to Spain. Now, this might initially not sound that bad, except that Werritty posed as Fox’s official adviser without actually having clearance to do so (even printing up business cards claiming he was Fox’s “personal adviser”), which is really fucking serious when he has access to Fox’s diary and is accompanying the Secretary of State for Defence to official meetings, both foreign and domestic, and was able to visit Fox at the Ministry of Defence despite not having security clearance from the MoD. You’d expect a scandal like that to outright kill a political career, but all Liam Fox did was say sorry and sodded off for a bit, now he’s back and he’ll be in charge of handling the complex international business issues and renegotiations of a shit-ton of trade agreements in the wake of the referendum result.

Cameron’s May’s Britain.

Who? David “has Shami Chakrabarti on speed-dial” Davis

(God damnit Davis, I wanted to use pictures where you’ve all got Union Jacks nearby but I’ve spent like fifteen minutes searching and I couldn’t find a single shot of you stood in front of one so that’s that genius idea ruined, thanks for that you unpatriotic bastard!)
MP for? Haltemprice and Howden
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Trying to have a sneaky nap whilst sat at the back.
New position? Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union
Leave or Remain? Out, out! Damned spot!
Gimme dirt! Bit of an odd one, David Davis, because he’ll now be working for Theresa May whilst also pursuing legal action against her in the EU courts because of the surveillance laws. Davis is one of the few members of the Conservative party who actually seems to give a shit about human rights, to the point where he actually resigned as MP, forcing a by-election (which he won) specifically so he could campaign against the government’s plans to extend the length of time police can hold terrorism suspects for without charge. Sadly, though, that compassion doesn’t seem to extend to gay people; Davis consistently votes against any legislation that might benefit anyone in the LGBT community, from voting against lowering the age of consent from 18 to 16 (bringing it in line with the heterosexual age of consent), voting in favour of Section 28, and voting against allowing same-sex couples to marry.

Also he’s a libertarian, and therefore a fucking idiot.

A quick word about his new role in the government: as you may have guessed by its title, it’s a new department set up specifically to handle the decision we really shouldn’t have made. Consequently, it’s difficult to speculate on how he’ll perform in the role, given how literally nothing is known about what the position entails other than “getting us out of Europe”. The position’s so new, in fact, that they don’t even have an office yet, though knowing my luck they’ll have found a place before I’ve finished this entry. Davis is a noted Eurosceptic though, so it’s probably not going to go well…

Who? Priti “Marlboro Woman” Patel

MP for? Witham
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Minister of State for Employment
New position? Secretary of State for International Development
Leave or Remain? Out like a cigarette you’ve not had a drag on for, like, twenty minutes…
Gimme dirt! Holy shit she lobbied seriously fucking hard for the cigarette industry, specifically whilst working at a PR firm employed by British-American Tobacco. They paid her £165 per hour for her services, by which I mean she went round countering the negative publicity caused by the revelation that BAT paid its factory workers in Burma £15 per month. She obviously has fond feelings for the cigarette industry, having since voted to repeal the smoking ban, and has also been a vocal opponent of plain cigarette packaging, so they must be fun to lobby for.

Or maybe it’s the £20,000 a month she misses, who knows?

The rest of your standard Tory, umm, standards, apply here: pro-death penalty, pretty homophobic (though, granted, she sometimes votes the way her constituents want, which leads to a pretty hilarious voting record on gay rights), would like to sell off the NHS, wants to read your emails, etc… Another fucking libertarian, another Brexiteer thrust into an international role in order to deal with the mess they’ve created, though we should at least be thankful that, given her history with the Tobacco industry, she hasn’t been given a more business-orientated position. The Department for International Development is chiefly responsible for distributing foreign aid as opposed to funding businesses, and it’s not like she thinks her department should be scrapped and foreign aid should be used to serve the interests of British business or anything like that… Oh no wait, yes she does!

Who? Liz “better find that clip on YouTube, then…” Truss

MP for? South West Norfolk
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Secretary of State for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (or “DEFRA”, if you will…)
New position? Secretary of State for Justice
Leave or Remain? In like two-thirds of our cheese
Gimme dirt! This is all you need to know about Liz Truss:

Okay, that’s not quite true, there’s something else you need to know about Liz Truss:

Seriously, I’m not that arsed about Liz Truss, I just really wanted to use those clips because they’re fucking amazing and I love them.

Okay, I’ll give you something. Her appointment to the role that Michael Gove held is quite a karmic one, as she worked under Michael Gove when he was Education Secretary and was often frustrated by his reluctance to act on her suggestions, so sitting on his throne must be a pleasant sensation for her. Her Father was a Maths professor, so during her time in the Department for Education when she campaigned for improvements in the way that certain subjects are taught Maths was her main focus, though some of her planned reforms for nursery schools ended up being blocked by Nick “-stradamus” Clegg. During her time at DEFRA she cut agricultural subsidies to solar farms, believing it’s detrimental to build them on arable land, and that link leads to the website of the local Norfolk newspaper “Diss Express”, a fact I’m pointing out for shits and giggles. And yes, there is a town here called Diss. Fortunately/thankfully/mercifully, unlike her DEFRA predecessor Owen Paterson, Liz accepts that Climate Change is A Thing That Is Happening and it’s totally our fault, which is mainly why she campaigned to Remain.

She also knows her leaves…

…and to be fair, Capybaras aren’t a native species here either.

Who? Andrea “nominated for Reader’s Choice” Leadsom

MP for? South Northamptonshire
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Minister of State for Energy
New position? Secretary of State for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs
Leave or Remain? Out like a fox being chased by a pack of merciless, snarling, bloodthirsty animals and their dogs.
Gimme dirt! Despite taking over Liz’s old stomping grounds at DEFRA, walking Bill Bailey sketch Conservative Mother and lover of a good hunt Andrea Leadsom still can’t escape the repercussions of that Times interview, mainly because they released further segments of the interview that show Leadsom claiming men shouldn’t be involved in childcare as they may be paedophiles. A single day in office, and there are already calls for her to be sacked, but she’s probably not too fussed as now she has bigger issues to concern herself with; namely, repealing the fox-hunting ban. Leadsom claims the ban isn’t needed as it’s “absolutely not proven to be in the interest of animal welfare whatsoever”, which are words you really need to mull over for a moment; like a fine wine, you should savour those words as you contemplate the panic and mortal terror of the pursuit, the feeling of fire in exhausted mammalian lungs gasping for breath, the whisper of the mid-afternoon breeze scored by a funeral dirge of snarls, barks and growls accentuated by horseshoes on country lanes, and the final heady aroma of mud, grass, bracken and death.

Marvelling at how much damage just one interview can do to a person’s career - and also laughing at her blog - means that I haven’t actually mentioned that she’s pretty homophobic. She didn’t vote for same-sex marriage, and “wasn’t happy” with the legislation because of the “very clear hurt” it has caused Christian couples. She also has ties to a “gay cure” Christian group through a schools-exchange program in Uganda, a country that’s become a target for American fundamentalist anti-gay preachers in recent years. There’s even this little musing on a gay couple adopting children hidden in the depths of her blog, over a year before she was elected as an MP. Granted, there’s probably not much she can do to fuck things up for the LGBT community from her position in DEFRA, unless you happen to be gay and living in the arse-end of nowhere, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean to say her fundamentalist beliefs are something we should dismiss or ignore: her style is American, literal interpretations, where a woman’s worth is how many children she can give birth to (hence her fucking outrageous comments about May) and homosexuality is an abomination, and such ways of thinking shouldn’t be allowed to infect our political world. If we were Americans, she’d be called a Creationist and people would listen to her, but we’re British, so instead we’ll just buy up all the domain suffixes she didn’t and redirect “leadsome 4 leader dot whatever” to Stonewall’s website instead.

Also she lied on her CV, which is fine if you’re a twenty-something trying to get a cashier job at Sports Direct, not so fine if you’re 47 and are running for election.

Who? Boris “no, seriously, his middle name’s de Pfeffel, I’m honestly not joking” Johnson

MP for? Uxbridge and South Ruislip
Voting Record Here
Previous position? Slouching on the back benches during the brief period between being Mayor of London and utterly fucking everything up.
New position? Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Leave or Remain? Patron Saint of Brexit
Gimme dirt! I genuinely have no idea where to begin…

Alright, firstly, the world fucking hates him, mainly because he seems to be on a mission to insult every other nation on the planet, as this frankly stunning map put together by the Independent (well, i100, really) shows. Secondly, he’s unashamedly racist, using this word to describe black people in his Daily Telegraph column, and describing President Obama as “the part-Kenyan President” in the Sun. Thirdly, he is absolutely a character, a creation; messing up his hair a certain way moments before an interview or public appearance, dropping his actual first name Alexander, that Wodehousian nightmare of a speech pattern, all of it an affectation. Boris the brand, rather than Boris the man. And all to climb higher, up greasy poles into halls of power, for his own sake and nobody else’s. He didn’t enter politics to help others or build a better society, blind ambition and the furtherance of his career at all costs are what drove him to Westminster. The image he cultivated to achieve that was subtle in its genius, an eccentric buffoon, quintessentially English and a charming scamp to boot; equal parts the essence of the Beano comic, the quaint eccentricity of the elders in the upper class, and every English country village stereotype you can think of. Farage is usually the one considered “the British Donald Trump”, but damn Johnson’s the better developed of the two characters: Farage is just cheap xenophobia and incendiary rhetoric, there’s an intelligence behind Johnson.

Fourthly, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is legit a serious fucking position in the Government: only the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister have more power. Now, not only does the Foreign Secretary oversee diplomatic relations with other nations, promoting British interests overseas and maintaining a global consular network, but they’re also responsible for an absolute shitload of domestic matters as well, including domestic defence and counter-terrorism operations and intelligence gathering. So both GCHQ - our intelligence and security organisation - and MI6 - our foreign intelligence agency - answer directly to them, such is the immense amount of power in this position.

This is the man in that position now:

I really don’t know what to say…

Last updated July 16, 2016