Furious Tories are cutting up their membership cards in protest at Theresa May

When Theresa May announced that she was going to reach out to Jeremy Corbyn to find some kind of Brexit compromise, most people saw it as the Tory trap it is. She's simply casting around for other politicians to take a share of the blame for the chaotic and humiliating Brexit farce she's created through her own incompetence, inflexibility, hubris, weak leadership, and outright malice.

A lot of Tory members didn't see it that way though, and in the immediate aftermath of her speech Twitter was suddenly full of Tories cutting up their membership cards in protest at the mere idea that Brexit should be attempted as anything other than a closed Tory shop run exclusively for Tory party advantage.

This is a pretty weird place for Tory party members to draw the line when you think about it.

Here's just some of the stuff that gave these card-cutters no cause to quit the party over the last 9 years.

• The Tories' economically and morally reprehensible austerity policies (wage repression, public service cuts, vandalism of the social safety net, and catastrophic under-investment in the drivers of future economic prosperity like infrastructure, education, and affordable housing).

• All the broken Tory promises that the budget deficit would have been completely eliminated by 2015 (it's still there in 2019!).

• Theresa May's unlawful and racist Hostile Environment legislation which resulted in the Tory government deporting black British citizens to their deaths in exile overseas.

• Soaring rates of child poverty, in-work poverty, and food bank dependency since 2010.

• The wanton Tory ideological vandalism of the NHS.

• Unlawful Tory Tribunal Fees that were designed to price workers out of the justice system and defend bad bosses from paying out compensation for abuse and discrimination of their workers.

• Losing the UK's AAA Credit Rating for the first time since the 1970s.

• Overseeing the slowest economic recovery in centuries and the worst period of workers' wage stagnation in recorded history.

• The systematic Tory abuse of sick and disabled people that has resulted in literally thousands of people dying within weeks of being told that they're "fit for work".

• The astonishing serial incompetence of Chris Grayling.

• Zac Goldsmith's despicable BNP-style London Mayoral campaign and the party's ever accelerating shift into fanatical extreme-right ultranationalist territory.

• The biggest education cuts in decades.

• The way the Tories make a big show and dance about suspending and expelling racist and bigoted politicians, only to let them all crawl back into the party once the fuss dies down.

• The unprecedented Tory local government cuts meaning people all over the country are paying far more Council Tax in return for significantly reduced local services.

• The creation of a nationwide violent crime epidemic through the destruction of 21,000 police jobs and the annihilation of funding for outreach and prevention projects.

• And let's not forget Theresa May's unbelievably incompetent handling of the Brexit process that's resulted in the farcical national humiliation of overshooting her own Brexit deadline and begging the EU for more time because nobody with any sense wants to approve the rubbish deal she's cobbled together.

They were perfectly fine with all of this maliciousness and incompetence over the last 9 years, and it's only now, when Theresa May cynically tries to drag Jeremy Corbyn into her own Brexit mess, that these Tory tribalists resort to online temper tantrums and publicly quit the party!

I guess it's good that they're getting there in the end, but their wilful blindness to all the harm their beloved party has done to our nation and our economy, and the sheer ridiculousness of their final reason for quitting suggest that they're hardly likely to become less venal and selfish people now that they've abandoned active Toryism.

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