rationalskepticism.org

With regret, I must begin with an apology. As the Westminster-based events of Thursday unfolded, I recalled with mounting horror that I had at one point during 2018 described a Theresa May cabinet as “a government of all the talentless”. As so often over the past few years, this would turn out to be an absolute failure of the imagination. I now realise I was, back then, living through a halcyon era of political accomplishment. Jeremy Hunt, Philip Hammond, even David Davis … those guys were like the Time Lords – or Socratic statesmen, or masters of the Glass Bead Game – compared with what was reshuffled into existence on Thursday.

Braverman in particular is mesmerically dim, with a classic Channel 4 News interview with the attorney general suggesting not only that she could be outperformed at the dispatch box but that she could be outperformed by the dispatch box. Or indeed any other item of furniture in the Palace of Westminster.

The chancellor has been replaced by Rishi Sunak, whose entire aesthetic is that of an Apprentice candidate who’s just drenched himself in Diesel’s Only The Brave, and is willing to tear up his fiscal rules for the chance for Johnson to own 50% of his business. The Treasury itself will be renamed Zenith, Velocit-E, or Team Eleventen.