antitheatricality and politics (bye bye Bidey)

The bullet and the ear resulted in a conspiracy a-go-go bonanza of theatrical tropes - it was all staged, Trump as crisis actor, false flag operations etc etc - way too many to monitor, although I did retain this tweet from one Coffeetimes: 

Now we know why Trump was missing for 11 days

Rehearsals

Then came the Republican convention aka Trumpamania:

“We are in the bread-and-circus stage of American decline…faced with an electorate that’s given up all sense of civic responsibility or never learned it in the first place, it’s rational to offer them spectacle in lieu of solutions to their problems....  We live in an un-serious country”

- Nick Catoggio, "The Bread-and-Circus Stage of American Decline" (at The Dispatch)

Not only is Trump too old, his whole vaudevillian festival of hate act is just tired.

advice from one actor to another (Bradley Whitford)

And then as Biden seemed to be cooped up and digging in, and the analogies with King Lear swirled, the gamechanger: 

Biden’s selfless decision to drop out sets stage for an entirely different election 

- The Guardian

Adam Gopnik at the New Yorker went all the way with the analogies:

Joe Biden exits the stage: The Shakespearian end to a distinguished reign

The painful but essential self-removal of Joe Biden from the race for President—one that he has run so hard and, in many ways, in so distinguished a manner—holds some of the shape of a Shakespearean tragedy. So obvious is the seeming connection that it was already a pregnant comparison before there was even a likelihood, much less a certainty, that Biden would cede the stage. The Times has been full of talk of “Shakespearean” falls, its pages touched by leavenings of Julius Caesar and mutterings of King Lear. Indeed, a few weeks ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the paper’s own Bard-obsessive columnist, Maureen Dowd, asked two eminent Shakespeareans, Stephen Greenblatt and Simon Schama, just whom in the canon Trump and Biden reminded them of. Neither, tellingly, at that moment, had a strong analogue for the President—though, for Trump, Schama chose Dogberry, the clownish sheriff with the incompetent posse, in “Much Ado About Nothing,” albeit a Dogberry with a darker heart.

An analogue that immediately comes to mind for Biden at this dramatic moment in his and the nation’s life is John of Gaunt, in “Richard II,” the deeply patriotic, yet superannuated and out-of-touch grand old man who, on his deathbed, delivers a matchlessly beautiful speech in praise of the England he has known and of the values he fears are passing. “This earth, this realm, this England,” he chants, warning with desperate alarm that his opponents’ “rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last”—meaning, of course, that he thinks it might. Gaunt resonates because of the depth of Biden’s patriotism and the self-evidence, post-debate, of his own superannuation—of the pathos of his devotion to his country and of the increasing impotence of his rhetoric, however deeply felt and however right the warnings that he offered were.... 

Biden was lost and wandering on a heath of his own devising, and the attempts by his supporters and his friends to rally around him recalled not so much a character out of Shakespeare as the medieval epic hero El Cid, who is mounted on his horse in the desperate hope that the memory of his courage might still be enough to frighten the enemy.

[This comparison between Biden and his dead-enders with El Cid  (the Charlton Heston movie based on a real Iberian warlord - Rodrigo Diaz - known as El Cid) had struck me too. But Gopnik has garbled it a bit:

Here's how it goes in the movie:

Rodrigo dies, and a rumor of his death spreads. His allies honor Rodrigo's final wish. With help of an iron frame they prop up his body, its eyes staring straight ahead. Dressed in full armor and holding an unfurled banner, he is strapped to the back of his horse, Babieca. Guided by King Alfonso and Emir al-Mu'tamin riding on either side, the horse leads a mounted charge against Ben Yusuf's now terrified soldiers, who believe that El Cid has risen from the dead. In the panic that ensues, Ben Yusuf is thrown from his horse and is crushed beneath Babieca's hooves, leaving his scattered army to be annihilated..

And this is the "true legend" of history:

After his demise, but still during the siege of Valencia, legend holds that [Rodrigo consort] Jimena ordered that the corpse of El Cid be fitted with his armor and set on his horse, Babieca, to bolster the morale of his troops. In several variations of the story, the dead Rodrigo and his knights win a thundering charge against Valencia's besiegers, resulting in a war-is-lost-but-battle-is-won catharsis for generations of Christian Spaniards to follow. It is believed that the legend originated shortly after Jimena entered Burgos, and that it is derived from the manner in which Jimena's procession rode into the city, i.e. alongside her deceased husband.]

[back to Gopnik]

So, yes, let us go there: of all the Shakespearean figures whom Biden’s fall recalls, it is Lear. Lear in his sense of self-loss; Lear in his inability to understand, at least at first, the nature of his precipitous descent; and, yes, Lear in the wild rage, as people sometimes forget, that he directs at his circumstances. “Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain / Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. . . . Then let fall / Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.” This was all too evidently Biden’s emotional tone in these past weeks. When he announced to George Stephanopoulos, in an interview meant to recover his position, that he’s “not only campaigning” but “running the world,” the forced grandiosity of the wounded King was all too apparent. (For his daughters, read passim, his one-time supporters, with Nancy Pelosi cast as Goneril, and Barack Obama as an improbable Regan, a double betrayal by those whom he had trusted.)

But the President stands, or sits, in relation to Lear with this significant addendum. Until his decision to stand aside for a new Democratic Party nominee, Biden seemed to be solving an ancient literary question: What would have happened if the King had not given up the throne? And that answer was plain; it would have been even worse than what happened when he did. Lear, let us recall, begins the play by giving up his office in exchange for the gratification of the praise of his children, all of whom ostentatiously flatter him—except for Cordelia, the only one who genuinely loves him, who fears seeming insincere. The loss of office and the betrayal of his daughters leaves him soon alone and friendless, save for his loyal fool, out in a wild storm.

With Biden, though, unlike Lear on the heath, raging in the company of only his fool, we were out there on the heath with him, being rained on and blown about, too. The final chapter of the Biden campaign was not pleasant or pretty, with the rage of the President lacking the dignity of age and the instinctive patriotism of service that he had shown for so long, replacing it with sheer frustration and echoes of another, forgotten Joe Biden. That was the Biden whom chroniclers had long seen as profoundly ambitious, easily frustrated, and in his way already unduly embittered by the neglect of the élite for whom so much, including political elevation, seemed so much easier. The Biden whom Richard Ben Cramer portrayed in “What It Takes,” a chronicle of the 1988 Presidential race—awkward, amiable, and angry—seemed uncomfortably reanimated. On a daily basis, we were watching a man who might well have mulishly pushed aside the evidence of his cratering support. For weeks, there was the very real chance of civic catastrophe, with the fierce blaze of riot likely to set the whole country on fire.

Today, Biden, just as Lear does at the end, seems to have made his peace with the necessity of accepting the sheer injustice of his condition and his predicament, while seeking comfort in the saner corners of his life. Now, with the knowledge that he has finally made the right call for the general good, we can look back in sympathy with his personal predicament. It is unjust; he did a good job. The injustice extends to the reality that, while Biden is old and frail, his opponent is, and sounds, old and nuts. To reflect on Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention is to see true madness: a disjointed sequence of grievance, self-reference, and unmoored stream of consciousness, offered in a disturbing flow of disjointed imagery, bleeding ears backing into Hannibal Lecter. The whole sounded less like poor Lear and more like poor Tom, the lunatic on the heath whom the disguised Edgar impersonates. Who gives anything to poor Trump?, the ex-President said, in effect. Whom the foul fiend hath led through fire and through flame, and through ford and whirlipool, o’er bog and quagmire . . . to course his own shadow for a traitor. Bless thy five wits! Trump’s a-cold!

Biden, by comparison, deserves to be ennobled, not ejected. But if there is one theme that runs through Shakespeare it is that the search for justice is almost always doomed, and that the best we can hope for is self-insight and compassion. And so, unjust or not, Biden’s act is also essential—the good job he had done was over. He has, unlike Lear, who ends his life in the midst of a civil war, the gratitude of his country, too, or at least that of part of it not already despairing.

The great lesson of “King Lear” is not that it is wise, or unwise, to give up power, but that power is always insufficient balm to the human condition. Shakespeare’s point is that we should seek comfort neither in empty flattery nor in the exercise of office but in the presence of those who genuinely care for us. Biden has all that which, as poor Macbeth, who has none of it, says, “should accompany old age, / As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends...."

And then another instant-classic trope-a-dope bit of theatricalism - from West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin 

How I Would Script This Moment for Biden and the Democrats

The Paley Center for Media just opened an exhibition celebrating the 25th anniversary of “The West Wing,” the NBC series I wrote from 1999 to 2003. Some of the show’s story points have become outdated in the last quarter-century (the first five minutes of the first episode depended entirely on the audience being unfamiliar with the acronym POTUS), while others turned out to be — well, not prescient, but sadly coincidental.

Gunmen tried to shoot a character after an event with President Bartlet at the end of Season 1. And at the end of the second season, in an episode called “Two Cathedrals,” a serious illness that Bartlet had been concealing from the public had come to light, and the president, hobbled, faced the question of whether to run for re-election. “Yeah,” he said in the third season opener. “And I’m going to win.”

Which is exactly what President Biden has been signaling since the day after his bad night.

Because I needed the “West Wing” audience to find President Bartlet’s intransigence heroic, I didn’t really dramatize any downward pull that his illness was having on his re-election chances. And much more important, I didn’t dramatize any danger posed by Bartlet’s opponent winning.

But what if the show had gone another way?

What if, as a result of Bartlet revealing his illness, polling showed him losing to his likely opponent? And what if that opponent, rather than being simply unexceptional, had been a dump truck of ignorance and bad intentions? What if Bartlet’s opponent had been a dangerous imbecile with an observable psychiatric disorder who related to his supporters on a fourth-grade level and treated the law as something for suckers and poor people? And was a hero to white supremacists?

We’d have had Bartlet drop out of the race and endorse whoever had the best chance of beating the guy.

The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats.

But there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican.

At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney.

Nominating Mr. Romney would be putting our money where our mouth is: a clear and powerful demonstration that this election isn’t about what our elections are usually about it, but about stopping a deranged man from taking power. Surely Mr. Romney, who doesn’t have to be introduced to voters, would peel off enough Republican votes to win, probably by a lot. The double haters would be turned into single haters and the Nikki Haley voters would have somewhere to go, Ms. Haley having disqualified herself when she endorsed the leader of an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the government.

Does Mr. Romney support abortion rights? No. Does he want to aggressively raise the minimum wage, bolster public education, strengthen unions, expand transgender rights and enact progressive tax reform? Probably not. But is he a cartoon thug who did nothing but watch TV while the mob he assembled beat and used Tasers on police officers? No. The choice is between Donald Trump and not-Trump, and the not-Trump candidate needs only one qualification: to win enough votes from a cross section of Americans to close off the former president’s Electoral College path back to power.

Part of the wish fulfillment of “The West Wing” was that oratory can be persuasive. So Barack Obama could come forth at the Democratic convention next month in Chicago and remind us, once again, that we’re not red states and blue states but the United States by full-throatedly endorsing his old rival. And Mr. Romney could make the case that the Democrats are putting country before party in ways that the MAGA movement will not, and announce his bipartisan cabinet picks at the convention as well.

After the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump last Saturday, rallygoers pointed at reporters and shouted, “You’re next!” and Republicans in Congress and on television were blaming Mr. Biden and D.E.I. for the shooting, so it doesn’t look as if that terrible moment will serve as the healing event we’ve all been waiting for. But Democrats nominating a Republican could be. And when it loses the popular vote for the eighth time in nine presidential elections, the Republican Party can then rebuild itself back into a useful force for democracy.

The writing staff would tell me I was about to jump the shark, that this is a “West Wing” fantasy that would never, ever happen. But as Bradley Whitford used to say, “Isn’t the biggest fantasy on television a mafia boss in therapy?” The Democrats need to break the glass and this is a break-glass plan, but it’s more than that. It’s a grand gesture. A sacrifice. It would put a lump in our throats.

But mostly, it would be the end of Donald Trump in presidential politics.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Stray bits of theatricality, sources often unknown

Biden flips the script — and Republicans forget their lines

Someone asked why Obama had not endorsed Kamala yet, and gets this reply"

You still don't understand campaign theatrics...this is a well choreographed stage play. He IS the last voice because he is the most powerful voice.

And then

Gotta say, as a Canadian, watching this season of America has been absolutely riveting. Kudos to the writers.

I just hope it’s not the series finale

anti-theatricality and rock (part 2)

Nik Cohn, from Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom, on early English "rock and roller" Tommy Steele (and his manager John Kennedy)

Not that it interferes with the SUPREME GREATNESS of Awop (rereading it at the moment, must be the fourth go-round) but Cohn constantly flip-flops around this opposition "rock and roll" versus "showbiz". Or at least it's a kind of wobbly, reversible ideologeme throughout the book...    After all, it's clear that nearly all the early rockers were showmen with routines and shticks and stage stunts...  they were acts as much as they were raw realness,  rehearsed as much as "wild". Elvis was a fan of Dean Martin (and as the journey of "Hound Dog" indicates, in practice it's hard to separate the blues and Vegas-style variety).  And then there's P.J. Proby - just about Cohn's favorite performer, a talismanic figure - who's the most outrageous ham ever.   

Barney Hoskyns on The Fall and Mark E. Smith, sideswiping punk as just another form of showbiz, instantly recuperated by the Spectacle  

 

Andy Gill on The Birthday Party

The idea that there is no theatre in the Birthday Party seems misplaced.

Perhaps it is the theatre of cruelty - Artaud-rock versus art-rock

But "Nick the Stripper" is a self-lacerating satire of the exhibitionism involved in getting onstage, as far as I can work it out.

And later Cave would be quite interested in the idea of the Performer, the Showman - e.g. "The Singer"

Hadn't realised his Bad Seeds / Kicking Against the Pricks phase love of "entertainment music, what some would call corn" went all the way back to the first group

Ray Lowry interviewing Chris Dean of The Redskins, August 1983

Kim Gordon, in Artforum, 1983

In the spring of 1981 the rock group Public Image Ltd. (PiL) played at the Ritz in New York. That club’s movie-scale video screen, which functioned as a barrier and was used to create or motivate the crowd’s reaction, was the center of the performance. PiL’s three members were projected on the screen, both as shadows (they were lit from behind for the video cameras) and as a video picture. A giant image of John Lydon’s face, laughing, appeared, larger than the Wizard of Oz. He began singing, and then the live image was changed to a pre-recorded tape of a demented commercial rock video. Furious at the ghostlike, ritualistic silhouettes of the group behind the screen—instead of, as usual, directly in front of them—the crowd constantly interrupted the music. They barraged the screen with bottles, finally tearing it down. The group hadn’t intended to cause a riot; in their words, they were trying something new. They did not want to mechanistically continue in the learned role of rock entertainers. As PiL’s Keith Levene remarked in an interview in ZigZag magazine in August 1981, “You’re more honest putting on a video or sending a video round to do 30 dates, rather than sending a band around to do it . . .You’re standing up there and saying ‘after you’ve bought my album for so many pounds and heard how great we are you can now stand in front of us and see how great we are . . .’” 

People pay to see others believe in themselves. Many people don’t know whether they can experience the erotic or whether it exists only in commercials: but on stage, in the midst of rock ‘n’ roll, many things happen and anything can happen, whether people come as voyeurs or come to submit to the moment. As a performer you sacrifice yourself, you go through the motions and emotions of sexuality for all the people who pay to see it, to believe that it exists. The better and more convincing the performance, the more an audience can identify with the exterior involved in such an expenditure of energy. Performers appear to be submitting to the audience, but in the process they gain control of the audience’s emotions. They begin to dominate the situation through the awe inspired by their total submission to it. Someone who works hard at his or her job is not going to become a “hero,” but may make just enough money to be able to afford to be liberated temporarily through entertainment. A performer, however, as the hero, will be paid for being sexually uncontrolled, but will still be at the mercy of the clubs and of the way the media shapes identity. How long can someone continue to exert intensity before it becomes mannered and dishonest?

Scott Miller of Game Theory / Loud Family / Music: What Happened? 

"As you know, I kid the 1980s. I wonder can it possibly be fair to condemn an entire decade as a horrifying decline in every kind of musical competency, but nostalgia for the Eighties baffles me. Eighties nostalgia has lowered my opinion of nostalgia. So you're right, I was unconsciously targeting that kind of decline with "What Happened?" But pop music is great in that a true decline fosters a true pop response, like R.E.M. Eighties music suffered from a coliseum spectacle mentality, and R.E.M. reached around that with a sort of small-combo, home-spun literary connection approach."

Michael Stipe

"Awhile back I found myself repeating a lot of things on stage — a lot of the vocal parts, and the same motions. That made me feel insincere about what I was doing." He pauses as people talking loudly pass the car. "So I stopped using a set list; I don't start many songs so I really don't have to know what's coming up. It is always a surprise to me; and we always change the set around. I have to keep things interesting: I despise the idea of Keith Richard playing 'Street Fighting Man' 15 years after he's written it. It's horrid; the idea of that is like being in hell."

Anti-theatricality and rock part 1

anti-theatricality + politics (curtains for Biden?)

Will Stancil:

"What makes this so depressing is that if you stop doing theater criticism on the strength of his voice or whatever, this is a clip of a US president strongly defending a working-class economic boom he successfully fought to create. And no one wants to hear that or seems to care."

David Frum at the Atlantic:

As I watched this good man summoning all the power of his will against the weakening of his body, two Broadway songs came to mind. One from the musical Evita:

But on the other hand, she’s slowing down

She’s lost a little of that magic drive.

But I would not advise those critics present to derive

Any satisfaction from her fading star.

She’s the one who’s kept us where we are.

And the other from Hamilton:

If I say goodbye, the nation learns to move on

It outlives me when I’m gone.

Andrew Sullivan: 

Two weeks ago, I wrote that the Biden campaign is over. It still is. The attempt these last two weeks to insist that the parrot is not, in fact, dead is Monty Python material. Even Barro, Chait, and Yglesias have reluctantly jumped ship! So let us remind ourselves. The Biden campaign is no more; it has ceased to be; it is bereft of life; it has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed its last. Now what?

Also says of his old schoolmate Starmer:

"After years of Tory radicalism, instability, rotating premierships, and performance art, Keir is the small-c conservative of the left."

President Biden speaks:

It is time for us to stop treating politics like entertainment and reality TV.

Agreed, but given that is how it is, you're on the verge of being voted off the island.

Kurt Andersen concurs:  

As I’ve written since 1998, U.S. presidential politics since 1960 has evolved into a show business genre, ever more about public performance. But anger and disgust at that unfortunate fact doesn’t justify choosing to run a candidate no longer able to excel in this world as it is.

to which someone replies:

..&/but in terms of the nature of what TYPE of performance is needed right now is less soaring orator (which neither Biden nor Harris does well) than public prosecutor (at which Harris is among the best)

Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton suggests gutsy George Clooney should be the Democratic candidate:

Why Clooney?

Most importantly, he’d whip the dangerous Donald Trump easily, probably by a landslide. Clooney’s a better actor. That’s all Trump is, besides a compulsive liar. Clooney is much more.

He has an easy smile that exudes sincerity and is extraordinarily telegenic. Trump pouts and frowns and is a horror show.

Clooney exhibits conviction and is a humanitarian. Trump displays self-centered opportunism and sows hate.....

Clooney’s a world-class communicator.

He’s a Kentucky native who conceivably could draw support from Southern border states. Remember that wonderful “O Brother, Where Art Thou” flick when he played a lead bluegrass singer? Sure, he was an escaped convict, but that was just pretend. Trump’s a true-life convicted felon.

Clooney piloted the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail into “The Perfect Storm” and it perished, but I’m confident he wouldn’t sink the ship of state.

Look how he cleverly and deftly upended the corrupt corporate attorney who tried to kill him in “Michael Clayton.”

And showed his environmental creds and family values in “The Descendants.”

Politicians should never underestimate the voters’ desire to be entertained.

Yes, Clooney is just a movie star who has never served in public office. But neither had actors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger before they were elected California governor.

And Trump, a reality TV star, had never held office either before shockingly being elected president. In his case, it showed.

All right, Clooney is not going to be nominated for president. Democrats haven’t the imagination.

But they should entertain us at their August convention by engaging in a competitive, wide-open contest for the best candidate to stop Trump. And it’s not Biden

anti-theatricality + politics - substance-not-showbiz Starmer special

 Alex Andreou on Sir Keir Starmer PM's speech outside 10 Downing Street: 

"To me, the most important part was the promise "to end the era of noisy performance and tread more lightly on your lives". Granted, it's not the most eyecatching bit, but it speaks to a part of me that's utterly exhausted from years of the hourly oxygen-sucking Tory clown-show."

The bit in question that Andreou is referring to: "to restore service and respect to politics, end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country"

I suppose you could also say that Starmer plans to redefine the term 'performance' to mean actual results, administrative quotas, etc rather than show / spectacle / theatrics / set-pieces / stunts etc. "Performance' as in how a car or a washing machine performs. 

[full text of the 10 Downing Street speech - warning: do no read this while operating heavy machinery]

Thank you. Good afternoon. I have just returned from Buckingham Palace, where I accepted an invitation from His Majesty the King to form the next government of this great nation.

I want to thank the outgoing Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. His achievement as the first British Asian Prime Minister of our country – the extra effort that that will have required – should not be underestimated by anyone.

We pay tribute to that today, and we also recognise the dedication and hard work he brought to his leadership. But now our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service.

When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future – that we need to move forward together. Now this wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions, not words.

I know that, but we can make a start today with the simple acknowledgement that public service is a privilege and that your government should treat every single person in this country with respect. If you voted Labour yesterday, we will carry the responsibility of your trust as we rebuild our country.

But whether you voted Labour or not – in fact, especially if you did not – I say to you directly, my government will serve you. Politics can be a force for good. We will show that. We’ve changed the Labour Party, returned it to service – and that is how we will govern, country first party second.

Yet, if I am honest, service is merely a precondition of hope, and it is surely clear to everyone that our country needs a bigger reset, a rediscovery of who we are. Because no matter how fierce the storms of history, one of the great strengths of this nation has always been our ability to navigate away to calmer waters.

And yet this depends upon politicians, particularly those who stand for stability and moderation – as I do – recognising when we must change course. For too long now, we turned a blind eye as millions slid into greater insecurity.

Nurses, builders, drivers, carers, people doing the right thing, working harder every day, recognised at moments like this before, yet, as soon as the cameras stop rolling, their lives are ignored. I want to say very clearly to those people – not this time. Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. The world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while.

But have no doubt that the work of change begins immediately. Have no doubt that we will rebuild Britain with wealth created in every community. Our NHS back on its feet, facing the future. Secure borders, safer streets, everyone treated with dignity and respect at work, the opportunity of clean British power, cutting your energy bills for good.

And brick by brick, we will rebuild the infrastructure of opportunity, the world class schools and colleges, the affordable homes that I know are the ingredients of hope for working people, the security that working class families like mine can build their lives around.

Because if I asked you now whether you believe that Britain will be better for your children, I know too many of you would say no, and so my government will fight every day until you believe again.

From now on, you have a government unburdened by doctrine guided only by the determination to serve your interest, to defy, quietly, those who have written our country off. You have given us a clear mandate, and we will use it to deliver change. To restore service and respect to politics, end the era of noisy performance, tread more lightly on your lives and unite our country.

Four nations standing together again, facing down as we have so often in our past, the challenges of an insecure world committed to a calm and patient rebuilding. So with respect and humility, I invite you all to join this government of service in the mission of national renewal. Our work is urgent, and we begin it today. Thank you very much.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Meanwhile the Grauniad's Marina Hyde archly wheels out the well-worn metaphorics of seasons-finales and series being canned for her adieu-Tories column:

Sunak axed, the cast eviscerated: at last, it’s the Tories’ season finale

It was worthy of a TV special. Truss, Rees-Mogg, Shapps, Liam Fox: so many erased after 14 years of dystopian soap opera. And not a moist eye in the house

... But look, after the 3am to 7am shift, no one will be able to say the right doesn’t do comedy. There were moments worthy of entire Netflix specials as in sports halls and community centres various Dickensian grotesques were ushered into their Christmas future, live on stage. Alas, it was going to take more than buying the Cratchits a turkey to get out of this one. Jacob Rees-Mogg heard his fate standing next to a candidate wearing a baked bean balaclava. He’ll be crying into Nanny’s starched bosom today. Committed sewage apologist Thérèse Coffey was pumped into the sea in Suffolk Coastal. Andrea Jenkyns had the middle finger given to her by the voters of Leeds South West and Morley. In Welwyn Hatfield, Grant Shapps chanted “supermajority” five times into the mirror, and then it came for him.

...  They won’t be playing anything from this album on the Conservative party’s Eras tour....