Number of Tory factions now exceeds number of MPs

Statisticians from Cambridge University have taken a great interest in Liz Truss's announcement of a new Tory splinter group which immediately splintered after being announced.

'That makes 350 factions now', said Brian Nerdygeek, 'What I find fascinating is that there are only 349 Tory MPs so either there's something very clever going on with trans-dimensional, imaginary numbers or an MP has done something rather silly and joined two different factions at the same time.'

At this point, Chris Grayling could be seen to slap his forehead.

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Only 20 Prime Ministers until polling day

The government has set a cap on how many more Prime Ministers it will allow to run the country before the next General Election.  'Twenty, tops,' stated a government spokesman, adding, 'and only that many if we can stop the lunatics having a vote.'  It isn't clear which lunatics he was talking about, but the consensus is that any attempt to eliminate lunatics must be a good thing.  Therefore, any attempt to eliminate any of the current Tory MPs automatically eliminates some lunatics.

'Now that Hunt has found £20 billion of headroom, there must be an opportunity to bring back Truss, she'll blow it in no time' suggested one MP, while another suggested that Boris coming back 'for a day or so' could see that headroom safely allocated to a chum on the VIP lane.  Other MPs think that there should be opportunities for previously untried Prime Ministers.  30P Lee Anderson thinks he'd make a great PM, as long as Labour promise not to sniggle, while Priti Patel thinks a smirking PM could be a real asset.  Most of the potential PMs are thought to be MPs at greatest risk of losing their seats - the pension of £125k per annum index linked for life each is thought to be a significant motivator.

'We'll probably have a leadership challenge next week, and the week after,' the spokesman said.  'It won't serve any practical purposes, but at least the country won't be watching the rest of us syphon wealth away while the spectacles continue.'

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Mark Francois "ready to serve" says Army chief

Brexit Commando Captain Mark "Don't Call Me Frenchy" François has taken the coveted (by him) place at the front of the queue to join Britain's new citizen army, even though it doesn't actually exist yet.

In a radical step for the Head of the Army, General (formerly Colonel) Sanders told "an armoured vehicle conference" that the army should be bigger. Citing Russia's invasion of Ukraine as an "attack on our system", he called for citizens to be trained in ground warfare, takeaway delivery and Netflix account navigation in order to preserve our cherished way of life.

The armoured vehicles at the conference did not comment, beyond a low appreciative throbbing of their engines, but reservists and fantasists across the land leapt to attention and began to stream to the nearest recruiting office in their tens. Given that there are no recruiting offices, many decided to settle for their local post office instead, where they collected their pension, pledge loyalty to General Bates, and bought some parcel tape to fix camouflage to their bobble hats. And at their head, M Francois MP, with a note from the Prime Minister himself encouraging him to sign up for "as long as it takes" and "see if you can persuade some of the other backbench nutters to join you."

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