This isn't going to be a very Twitter friendly thread, I suspect. It will be quite long and somewhat winding, but I have seen a few things over the last few days which have made me quite angry and we should be angry right now.

Whether you voted leave or remain, whether you are for small or big government, whether you consider yourself left-wing, right-wing or centrist, libertarian or authoritarian you should be furious with the current government.

Of course I am thinking about the decision not to extend school meals over half-term, but this is not the only thing. There is a whole torrid list of failures of both morality and basic competence.

When it comes to Brexit for example, we have never been given an opportunity to vote for a no-deal Brexit. The referendum was expressly about a soft-brexit and we were assured the suggestion that we would leave the single market with all that entails was "project fear".

The last two elections were expressly fought on the basis the Tories had a deal ready to go. This was a lie, but it was worse than just a lie.

When conmen do a bait and switch they have something to switch the bait for.

This government just hasn't done anything close to sufficient to prepare for no-deal. They're coming up with half formed plans with days to go before the plans need to be implemented. And then having the audacity to tell businesses to prepare, but how? For what?

I get the distinct impression this government still doesn't understand what Brexit even is. I hear today that they are trying to insist that Brits travelling to the Continent should be able to use to EU citizens queue at passport control. It's minor stuff but it's symptomatic.

Whilst no one has ever voted for a no-deal Brexit undoubtedly there are people who would have done (just not anything close to a majority). I am not convinced anything more than a group of fringe nutters would have voted to do no-deal Brexit without preparation or forethought.

And now we're at the point where lorry drivers will need a passport to drive in Kent, the M20 is going to be a carpark, we're going to have a border in the Irish Sea, Parliament has decided to wreck the UK's reputation by declaring it's happy to break international law.

The only people I can conceive of who would be happy at this are those who just want to see the whole world burn and arch-European Federalists.

If I wanted a United States of Europe and didn't care about the cost, then the absolute shower of shit that is Brexit would be welcome.

No other country is going to put themselves through this and the UK is creating the situation where it has no choice but to go back to Europe and grovel for a deal.

This goes to the heart of the question - is this government basically competent to hold power? To which the answer is no.

Regardless of where you stand on the principle of Brexit no one should support what has become.

It's a bit like if you had a massive months long argument with the rest of your household about turning the front garden into an extension and you won the argument, but it took years for you to actually get builders in..

and when they did it was immediately evident that they didn't know how to mix cement, lay bricks or cut wood to the correct length.

You could wait and see how badly it turns out or you could dismiss them and reconsider. Doesn't mean you can't have the extension eventually!

The lies and deceit that have run with this are shocking and it's not normal. This is not how politics is normally run. Throughout most of my life if a government minister was caught lying or with his hand apparently in the till he'd resign.

But everything from the ridiculous bus through to how contracts are awarded is just a resigning issue. There is barely a day goes by, without the government doing something for which a minister ought to resign. And yet - nothing!

Look at Cummings - unelected and without any basic competence! He drives across the country, knowing he's infectious with a disease which is killing people and then drives to a local beauty spot with his family whilst his wife writes an article implying they are still in London.

When he's caught he uses Downing Street to hold a press conference for which he's late and then he just lies. And since then he's pushed for harsher penalties for people who break the lock-down rules. How is this guy still anywhere near government.

But it's worse than that. He is currently carrying out a defence review. His views on defence are not even sophomoric. I have looked at some of his blog posts. It's witless crap. When you studying war academically (and my first degree is war studies) you look at how technology..

changes warfare. And it doesn't!

This may sound strange, but it is a fact. Inventors and technicians don't do strategy, that's the role of statesmen and generals. New technology is incorporated into existing tactics and orders of battle.

Disruptive technologies are often cited as a way in which an adversary might negate the advantages of mass and technology that conventional armed forces have. The prime example is before WW1 the Italian navy developed submarines as a means of defeating battleships.

By the time they came into service the Royal Navy already had cruisers which were smaller faster vessels designed to deal with these asymmetric means.

Cummings thinks that drones render battleships and tanks obsolete. I am currently tracking over 40 anti-drone systems available

Anyone with a passing understanding of defence is aware that arms races are a two-way process. And actually the large conventional forces often have the counter-measures on the shelf before the smaller force wheels out it's unconventional threat. We've seen this over and over.

And yet this is the guy who is deciding how our country is defended! He's not part of a committee or leading a review. He's making the decisions.

And he has extensive Russian connections. I don't know that he's spy, but that it is a plausible possibility ought to disqualify him.

And then you have the "cottage" he stayed in, which didn't have planning permission and on which council tax has never been paid. Apparently, that's fine.

We come to the present day and Conservative MPs vote down a bill to extend free school meals over half-term during a pandemic. Who does that?

There are arguments (bad arguments) for keeping welfare payments and the like low.

All of those arguments are about either having to prioritise what we spend (which can be a legitimate concern) or the idea that a too generous system discourages people from getting into work.

That latter one doesn't work for two reasons:

1. We have nurses using foodbanks. By any sane measure nurses are valuable members of the community in work doing important work.

2. We're in a pandemic.

Even if you can somehow square the circle with some tortured logic to claim that our current is too generous and is discouraging people from getting into full-time work, that only applies in normal times.

We're in a pandemic and telling people they can't go into work.

This exactly the sort of time when we need government to be spending relatively freely. If you go with Keynsian logic then now is not the time to be trying the make the books balance. Now is the time to spend your accrued surplus.

Right wing politics has always hinged on the idea of smaller government and thus lower taxes. The trade-off has always been a less generous welfare state and less capable government agencies, but conservative politics still acknowledges a role for government. It's not anarchism!

So there is no rationale for not extending free school meals. There just isn't a good argument against doing it now. I am not at all convinced there's a good argument in normal times, but there certainly isn't one now.

This thread may appear rambling, leaping from one disgraceful episode to another, but that's our lives now. This is the government we have, lurching from crisis to scandal to crisis at a dizzying and exhausting rate.

I saw some analysis of Trump a few years back. Someone was trying to explain how and why he hadn't been sunk by his many scandals.

And the answer is he had too many. Every day he says or does something which would be a millstone around the neck of any other president.

From paying off pornstars to the cover-up around to Russian interference, to pretending to sign over his business interests to his children by piling blank paper on a desk, it's too much to focus on.

By the time he's putting children in cages we're exhausted.

There is a fatigue that comes from having to deal with a government like his our our's. It's just too much, by the time we've absorbed what one scandal we ought to be furious about is we're already immersed in the next.

But we cannot just let it go. How many of those scandals did you even remember? These are all things which ought to disqualify individuals or the entirety of the current government from office and yet we forget them.

And we're furious now about school meals, because we should be, but by Monday there will be something new and just as bad. We can't just move on to the next atrocity and forget about this one.