Whatever is happening to the Conservative Party?
Open wounds are opening in to 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 the 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, the spectacle of Tory donor and chief investment officer of the private equity firm Terra Firma Guy Hands 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 actually works in a business denies that Brexit has been the biggest hampering of British trade with the European trade sector, 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 life-long Tory supporter and voter from the wine trade expressed his horror of the current situation to none other than Jacob 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!

Richie 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 staffs being offered pay increased offers in both Wales and Scotland and the Fire Brigades Union being offered an increase too.
We can only hope that the PM takes a subtle hint from these developments and just sits down to at least talk to the other striking workers, otherwise the next annual pay round will be imminent and tings could then get very messy.
As I was putting this 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 mainstream in most of our lives.
An event that transcends party politics.