Just over two years ago, I sat up in bed and realised, with a sinking feeling, that we were at the beginning of five years of a Tory government. I reached for my sketchbook, drew a self-satisfied troll and felt marginally better. This became a habit. Now, each morning while listening to the Today programme on Radio 4, I pick up a pen and sketch a response to the news. These drawings are loose and scratchy, the compositions uncomplicated and direct, and they do not take long. Once I have completed these daily sketches, I post them on social media, where they join all those other messages in bottles bobbing along on the cybertides. Last year, in response to requests, I collected them all into a rather unwieldy volume that I titled Five Years… A Sketchbook of Political Drawings – Volume One 2020. The response was so encouraging that I decided to do it again a year later. So now Five Years… A Sketchbook of Political Drawings Volume Two – 2021 is piled high on my kitchen table, every bit as unwieldy as its predecessor. The year 2021 turned out to be a horrifying sequel to 2020 – a second instalment of the unprecedented events of the previous 12 months.
In January, we watched agog as horned shamans and Confederate flag-wavers attacked the Capitol in Washington. In February, the Tory right clamoured for Covid restrictions to be relaxed as new variants arrived to shatter their maskless dreams. In March, Meghan and Prince Harry shared all with Oprah as his creepy uncle avoided helping US authorities with their inquiriesand David Cameron retreated to his shepherd’s hut as news of his corporate lobbying broke. In April, the Russian bear continued to soil the woods on the Ukrainian border (little did we know what was to come). In May, the Dominic Cummings-Boris Johnson feud reignited, and in June there were reports of Matt Hancock caught in a Covid-breaching clinch. In July, Johnson got pinged on the eve of his self-proclaimed “freedom day” in England, and in August, the Taliban plunged Afghanistan back into the dark ages while our holidaying foreign secretary found that “the sea was closed”.
September saw the silly sausages of the Democratic Unionist party protesting against the Brexit they voted for and panic buying at petrol stations, and revealed a Brexit shortage of HGV drivers. In October, Johnson escaped to a Spanish villa for some pretend painting photo ops, and in November took a jet back from the Cop26 climate conference, where he had nodded off during a speech. Then in December, Omicron arrived just as rumours of last year’s Downing Street parties began to circulate. The year ended as it began, in turmoil, recriminations and a Covid Christmas. Recurring characters filled the pages as I sketched each day. There was that Russian bear, the furious silly sausage, long-suffering Britannia and her lion and, of course, our tousle-haired, pants-on-fire tinpot Churchill, in a ditch, naked as a newly clothed emperor, constructing champagne crate buses or cavorting in that hi-vis jacket. Johnson has danced through the sketchbooks of the last two years. As I continue drawing each day, I cannot help hoping that in 2023 the scandals will finally catch up with our glorious leader, but for now Sue Gray’s report is all but forgotten as the tragedy of Ukraine unfolds. It looks as if that Russian bear and its evil master will dominate the pages of volume three. Five Years… A Sketchbook of Political Drawings Volume Two – 2021 is available from thecyclingfishbooks.bigcartel.com