Scrooge: “And the Union workhouses. Are they still in operation?”
Charity Collector: “Both very busy, sir...”
Scrooge: “Those who are badly off must go there.”
Charity Collector: “Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”
Scrooge: “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
 
I AM certainly not the first person to mention the similarity, but the Tory Party has increasingly come to resemble Dickens’s famous miser, Ebenezer Scrooge. Indeed, some Conservatives appear to revel in the comparison, as we shall see.

Of course, Scrooge did eventually mend his ways, but only when threatened with the prospect of eternal damnation. The Tories appear confident that the warnings laid down by the Three Ghosts of Christmas don’t apply to them. Quelle surprise.

Some would say that many Tory souls were sold long ago or had atrophied to such an extent that an eternity spent in hellfire was always on the cards.

Meet just a few of the gang, to quote National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989), the “jolliest bunch of A-holes you’ll see this side of the nut house.” Or alternatively, a meeting of the now infamous “five families” group of hard-right Conservative MPs.

1) Former deputy PM, the perma-angry Dominic Raab
A member of the private “Ultras” Facebook group who called for the return of the workhouse. Are we surprised? Not especially, since “karate Dom” also put the boot into those who used foodbanks. Nicknamed “the incinerator” for the way he burned through staff when a minister. What a charmer.
 
2) Disgraced three-month Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi 
The kind of character that would claim expenses to keep his horses snug but resents those forced to choose between food or heating. One can sense his almost palpable rage when Zahawi finally had to cough up £4.8 million (including a penalty) for unpaid taxes, oblivious to his entitlement in escaping a prison sentence, which many thought he more than merited.
 
3) Boris Johnson
Where to begin with this one, a kind of warped Pickwick, his veneer of bonhomie concealing a history of mooching, greed, failure to get his round in/cadging coffee off junior staff, welching on lost bets (see Max Hastings), hypocrisy (single mothers), laziness and general callousness (“let the bodies pile high”).
 
4) Matt Hancock 
His risible 3 per cent donation to charity from his I’m A Celebrity earnings and overall air of smug superiority alternating with fawning sycophancy to superiors surely makes the former health secretary the Tories’ very own Uriah Heep.
 
5) “Baroness” Mone and husband 
The grifting duo demonstrate a stunning lack of self-awareness, which coupled with their ignorance, narcissism and mean-spiritedness suggest they could easily be characters in a Dickens novel. Or possibly cousins to Trollope’s nasty swindler Augustus Melmotte from The Way We Live Now.
 
6) Rishi Sunak 
With his “freeloading” comments about school dinners, alleged indulgence of his wife’s business connections, and air of tetchy entitlement, the pocket-sized PM could effortlessly be one of Dickens’s rogues gallery of villains.
 
7) “30p” Lee Anderson 
Deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, a man on a round-the-clock mission to be as aggressively obnoxious as his considerable talents in that direction allow. His disdain for the poor, refugees and anyone to the left of Hitler makes him a ringer for the cruel pupil-starving schoolmaster Wackford Squeers from Nicholas Nickleby. Minus the charm.

8) Suella Braverman 
With her lack of goodwill to all, vanity and performative cruelty, the sacked ex-home secretary puts Miss Haversham in the shade.
 
9) Tory-supporting Hannah Ingram-Moore 
Daughter of beloved lockdown hero Captain Tom, spa-loving “business and life coach” — always with an eye on the main chance. Bleak House’s “philanthropist” Mrs Jellyby, with a dash of Tolkien’s grasping Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.
 
10) Chancellor and budding property tycoon Jeremy Hunt 
The man who famously told his employees at his educational publishing company Hotcourses on September 11 2001 to turn the radio news volume down as it was “affecting the sales team’s telephone calls.” Very Ebenezer.

11) Jacob Rees-Mogg 
Surely a Dickensian caricature, evidenced by his silly name, fuddy-duddy blethering and deliberately antiquated dress sense. Mogg is the kind of snob that makes Evelyn Waugh seem like Arthur Mullard in comparison. His passive-aggressive politeness, condescension, hypocritical nest-feathering and nauseating religiosity may have made the author pause to consider whether he was piling it on a bit too much.

And lest we forget: Bone and Pincher, Charlie Elphicke, Owen Paterson, Nadine Dorries, Scott Benton, Andrew Griffiths, Miriam Cates, Imran Ahmad Khan, Priti Patel, Johnny Mercer and the rest of the wretched crew, even Fagin would give these grotesques a (very) wide berth.