WHATEVER is happening to the Conservative Party? Open wounds are opening into festering sores and more big fish Tories are leaving the sinking ship.
First came the ghostly, haunted, attempted return of former PM Liz Truss with her wonder strokes of Conservative economic orthodoxy. Even our own Tory MP Simon Hoare wants her as much as a bad penny.
Then came the news that Boris Johnson sycophant and love-struck ex-minister Nadine Dorries was to join the former disgraced health minister Matt Hancock in the political D-list celebrity wilderness. Some might say good riddance to them both!

Subsequently, there was the spectacle of Guy Hands, Tory donor and chief investment officer of private equity firm Terra Firma, calling Brexit a ‘complete disaster’ that has harmed large parts of the economy. Hands said: “The reality is it’s been a lose-lose situation for both us and Europe. The reality of Brexit was it was just a bunch of complete and utter lies.”
No-one who works in a business denies that Brexit has been the biggest hamper to British trade with Europe, decimating its profitability through a plethora of admin, red tape and paperwork hassle.

Witness the trade in which I was formerly involved – wine. On a recent Question Time programme, a lifelong Tory supporter and voter from the wine trade expressed his horror at the current situation to none other than James Rees-Mogg MP, who rattled out the old line about new trade deals being completed with Australia and New Zealand.
Now I would not disagree that these deals might aid some sectors, and I must confess to complete enjoyment of most Australian wines, but they only comprise a small percentage of wines in the UK market!

Rishi Sunak, our supposedly inflation-obsessed PM, must be wondering how the strikes in certain sectors and certain regions of the UK seem to be on the way to being settled – witness the NHS staff being offered increased pay in Wales and Scotland, and the Fire Brigades Union being offered an increase, too.
We can only hope the PM takes a subtle hint from these developments and sits down to at least talk to the other striking workers, otherwise the next annual pay round will be imminent, and things could then get very messy.
As I was putting this piece together the news of Burt Bacharach’s death was announced.

I reflected on the fact that this musical maestro bestrode the whole of the popular musical world for the past two generations and his music will have been part of many of our lives. An event that transcends party politics.