Brexit squats over the Tory leadership contest, unaddressed yet mangling reality around it – iNews

This is Ian Dunts Week, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If youd like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week,you can sign up here.

Hello, its another week of morbid horror Im afraid, watching two people who have no business being anywhere near the top of politics somehow competing to be prime minister. Whoever wins, we lose etc etc.

I reached a point of almost complete existential collapse watching the last TV debate and decided that was it for me. No more of that. Anymore than three and you feel like the political version of that bloke who ate McDonalds for a month.

Anyway column below, god help us all, and some recommendations after that.

Brexit squats over everything, barely mentioned, but casting its grim shadow across us. The further we get into this Tory leadership debate, the clearer it becomes. It has broken the partys epistemological system. It is no longer able to process information about the world on a rational basis. So now it does so through myth-making and fantasy. Its the opium dream version of political campaigning, but without the pleasure or the relaxation.

The only moment Brexits consequences were addressed in the BBC debate between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss on Monday came when the presenter asked about the queues to get into France. Were they the result of Brexit? And suddenly these two figures, who for the previous hour had been tearing strips out of each other, were joined in spiritual union. No, they both said stridently, firmly, and in unison.

Never mind the fact that the queues were exactly as predicted. The full evidential refutation of their previous assurances was taking place right in front of their eyes and it didnt even cause them to hesitate.

That one word no revealed the basic dynamic of the leadership race. Its the triumph of wish-thought over empirical thought. And that is a result of Brexit itself. For half a decade, we were consumed by a project which prioritised mythical national glory over practical disadvantage. And even though its now ostensibly over, the mental scarring remains.

Brexit long ago stopped being about European membership, or free trade deals, or even the Northern Irish Protocol. Those debates still happen of course, and they still mutilate peoples economic life and sense of identity, but they are not the central fixation. It is much broader than that. It is about the triumph of the will the idea that anything can happen if you just wish for it hard enough. The idea that faith destroys all barriers. If you just believe, truly believe, it will be real. It is the transubstantiation of political discourse.

Peoples voting records have never mattered too much to the Brexiters. They were always open to converts. Theresa May voted Remain but was enthusiastically embraced in 2016. That love affair was dented by her disastrous 2017 election campaign but it only really ended when she unveiled the backstop solution to the Irish issue. That was a cold hard dose of reality and therefore a betrayal of the core Brexit proposition that only fantasy can be allowed to permeate. And so, from one day to the next, she went back to being considered a Remainer.

Truss, on the other hand, has absorbed the Brexit instruction. Its like meeting an old school friend and finding out theyve become a Scientologist. Her eyes are open and wild with the newfound possibilities. Its why the old Brexit guard from Nadine Dorries and Jacob Rees-Mogg on the front benches to Steve Baker on the backbenches have thrown in their lot with her. They get that reassuring whiff of political Bacchanalia.

Its hard to tell if she really believes in this stuff or merely pretends to. Perhaps, deep down, she is still that radical young Lib Dem who wanted to get rid of the royal family, or the sensible centre-right Remainer who wanted to stay in the EU, and now she merely notes down whatever nonsense the Tory party base has ordered so she can warm it up in the microwave. Or perhaps she is now of the true faith, transfixed by the wondrous new worlds revealed in the Conservatives hallucinatory adventure. It doesnt matter. All that matters is that she promises to deliver on it.

Sunak is more interesting. Sometimes his eyes reveal a sense of frustration and bafflement, breaking out across the rictus Lotus-salesman grin. Occasionally, as in Mondays TV debate, it boils over into hectoring indignation. None of this makes sense. His political education taught him that this was the way you did things: hone your presentational skills, plant yourself in a Cameron/Osborne mould, speak to the Conservative instinct for sound money, show that you are electable. And yet its not working.

Its possible that, in his quieter moments, he has flickers of self doubt. After all, he campaigned for Brexit. He believed in it. He wrote preposterous papers crammed full of absolute drivel about free ports. He is the Brexit hipster in this contest, the one who was into it before it was cool. And yet, it has done something unexpected. It has changed the parameters and the incentives of political debate. And now the culture he helped create is swallowing him whole. Hes like a man who tried to light an incense stick and ended up burning down his house.

Despite his impeccable Brexit voting record, he oozes the old politics of managerialism, professionalism and restraint. He is not quite willing to give up on the idea of objective reality. He is a reminder of the bad old days, before that transcendent moment of national epiphany in 2016.

The rest of us are just trapped here, watching a Tory debate on tax cuts with no relevance to the problems we face, be it the cost-of-living, inflation, the lack of a growth strategy, decaying public services, the war in Europe, the climate crisis or the grotesque inequalities the country labours under.

This is what happens when you commit to a system-level idea grounded in nationalist fantasy and then reject any evidence of the damage it does. The debate over Brexit can pass, but the radicalising effect it had on people does not.

It has mangled and redefined the fundamental psychological assumptions of the governing party. And now were lost in a terrible psychedelia, tripping out on Tory hallucinations while the world burns around us.

For some reason this latest Marvel release got middling reviews upon its release. Thats more a symptom of a pent-up desire for a backlash and the critics growing tired of the relentless arrival of more Marvel films. Which is fine if youre not into it, dont go see it. But of all the films to have a backlash over, this was the wrong pick.

Love and Thunder is a joyous riot of utter nonsense. Within the opening couple of minutes a bloke is killing a sun god in front of giggling flower deities. And then later on Russell Crowe pops up as Zeus, playing him as a flamboyant Greek waiter in a skirt. If thats not a good night out at the movies then I have no idea what is.

Lizzos debut, Cuz I Love You, was one of the best pop albums Id heard in years. Eleven tracks on it and every one of them a banger. Youd just sit there and think: she cant possibly sustain this over a whole album. But she did. The new offering, Special, isnt anywhere near as good. But slightly below par Lizzo is still miles ahead of everyone else. An expertly structured cacophony of funk, disco, rap and pop. Itll cheer you up if you need it, and itll provide the soundtrack to a good mood if you dont.

Ive been rereading this comic series ahead of the new Netflix TV show, which starts next month. I cant really assess it objectively it was the kind of thing I read when a highly susceptible teenager and its strange fantastic world completely owned me. It still reads beautifully now. Its a comic for people who dont read comics. And it has at its heart a love for those who dont quite fit in.

It is ultimately a moral book, even if that is sometimes hard to parse when youre looking at a drawing of a bloke with teeth in his eye sockets and a talking raven. There are three possible entry points to the story: Overture, which is both a prologue and an epilogue because thats how Sandman rolls, Preludes and Nocturnes, which is the official start, and Season of Mists, which I think is the best entry point. If you want my advice, try the latter, then go to Overture and carry on from there if you like it.

This is Ian Dunts Week, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If youd like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week,you can sign up here.

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Brexit squats over the Tory leadership contest, unaddressed yet mangling reality around it - iNews