Four Chancellors and a Funeral How to Lose a Country in Ten Days

<p><strong><em>The sequel nobody wants. After a decade of the Tories, could it get any worse? Spoiler – it does.</em></strong></p> <p>Towards the end of 2021, Britain had been frogmarched into an escalating series of surreal calamities. Brexit was a disaster, the NHS was in crisis, the government was bathed head-to-toe in impropriety, senior Tories were still acting as though the public purse was their personal feed-trough, and the air crackled with anger about PartyGate. All of which led to an inglorious start to 2022: the year the UK saw two monarchs, three prime ministers and four chancellors.</p> <p>From Boris Johnson, who trashed our international reputation and handed billions to his mates so they could ineptly fight a pandemic while he stayed at home, shagging and acting as a super-spreader; to Liz Truss, a drive-by prime minister who managed to kill off the queen and crash the economy in a single week. And now we’re led by Rishi Sunak, who doesn’t know how to use a credit card, drives a pretend car, and grinningly promises even more poverty.</p> <p><em>Four Chancellors and a Funeral</em> delivers more of Russell Jones’s signature scathing wit, combining a detailed historical record of 2021 and 2022, with acerbic commentary, all of it leavened by jokes at the seemingly endless maelstrom of failures, nincompoops and hypocrisies.</p>