The chilling soulless cruelty of Rishi Sunak is the stuff of nightmares - February 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 11th, 2024

On Tuesday morning I woke in Liverpool with a start, my heart hammering after a night of the most wretched thoughts. The last thing I had seen before I lurched into a fitful sleep had been a foul thing – that Rishi Sunak and Piers Morgan summit – and the day had begun in the…

Only votes from the dead can keep this zombie Tory government alive - February 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - February 4th, 2024

If the dead could vote, who would they vote for? And what would the deceased community make of the Britain they have left behind? For example, in ye olden times Britain, before there were privatised water companies to keep us clean and hydrated, a famous warning cry went out when people threw their urine and…

If the National Trust can be captured by a fake grassroots group, what public institution is safe? - January 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 28th, 2024

Ah! The turning of the seasons! Once it was always early summer, as swifts swooped from gables, when the private limited company Restore Trust would announce the “anti-woke” candidates it hoped to parachute on to the National Trust board. As the elephant hawk-moths emerged in the simmer dim, Restore Trust would unveil would-be guardians of…

Like all supervillains, the Tories will meet their match - January 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 21st, 2024

On Wednesday, the former environment secretary Thérèse Coffey, on whose watch the deregulated post-Brexit waterways of Britain turned into rivers of human excrement, with only Feargal Sharkey to speak for them, tried to score a sarcastic point off Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary. Cooper “can’t even get the name of the country right, talking…

What next for woke ITV after the Post Office drama? Danny Dyer v the sewage scandal? - January 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 14th, 2024

What is the point of the arts? Last week, it appeared it is to create accessible mainstream drama that highlights and threatens to actually resolve an injustice that the government ignored, while at the same time increasing advertising revenue for a commercial broadcaster because of massive viewing figures – a double win for both big…

Where did all the government’s wine go? Expect another vintage Tory evasion - January 2024 The Observer - By Stewart Lee - January 7th, 2024

A government wine cellar provides “guests of the government, from home and overseas, with wines of appropriate quality at reasonable cost”. Perhaps some of Boris Johnson’s children are kept down there too. We never seem to see many of them. And what happened to Dilyn the dog? We know Johnson was easily bored of new…