This writer has a simple message for Rishi Sunak and his merry band of money-making grifters and ship-jumping Tory rodents: “Goodbye and don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord spilt you.”
The general election has been called and not a moment too soon. Over the past 14 years, the Conservatives in government have pushed the standards of public life down so low that a rattle snake could not squeeze under their bar.
Britain isn’t just ready for change, it’s desperate for change.
The Tories have been taking the mickey out of the general public for over a decade.
‘Cut and run’ Cameron started a calamitous race to the bottom of useless, inept and farcical UK prime ministers. Had he been in the army instead of the Carlton Club, he would be facing a double charge of desertion and dereliction of duty.
Theresa May, the hapless handmaiden of political mediocrity, became PM by simply not being Boris Johnson.
Within a very short time May found herself surrounded like a goldfish in a pond with DUP piranhas and bottom-feeder Brexiters.
It’s hard to know what she will be remembered for, except poor judgement and robotic dance moves.
Then came the great charlatan of public life, Boris Johnson. The man who glistened like a £3 bracelet from Ratners jewellery. Hale and hearty fellow well met – Eton’s Del Boy.
All guff and gas, Johnson was the embodiment of the rot at the heart of British politics.
If Britain was a pair of trousers, Johnson took them to the cleaners.
Electorally popular and charismatic, he won over the great, the greedy, the gullible and guileless. And like all opportunists, he was lucky in his competition – one Jeremy Corbyn.
Yet Johnson came to government without a plan or purpose and therefore was quickly found wanting.
Robert Huish, a biographer of the notoriously frivolous George, Prince Regent, said of him: “There appeared to be no limit to his desires, nor any restraint to his profusion.” This could equally be applied to the plutocratic Johnson.
Remember the fancy dan holiday to Mustique, a £7k rug, gold wallpaper at £250 per roll, a £3.5k drinks trolley, and that’s before dishing out baubles like dolly mixtures to Tory donors. He made Lloyd George look parsimonious.
But Bojo’s ultimate undoing was his own character and behaviour.
Johnson displayed the kind of contempt for ordinary people, struggling under the constraints of a pandemic, that one would expect more from an imperious Marie-Antoinette, rather than a prime minister in the middle of a national crisis.
And then there was Liz Truss – a cross between Pollyanna and Nurse Ratched. It appeared as if she won the top prize without even buying the raffle ticket.
It truly was barrel-scraping time at Tory HQ when Liz won the leadership contest in what seemed like a donkey derby.
Despite crashing the economy in quicker time than Boris Johnson takes to tuck in his shirt tails, Truss actually believes she would still make a good prime minister. The Truss premiership and legacy is assured as the answer to a pub quiz question.
Finally, it was last man standing, Rishi Sunak. The runner up to Truss. Says it all really.
Sunak is the ultimate Frank Spencer of British politics. He is what the late Seamus Mallon called “an unlucky politician’. Nothing seems to go right for the forlorn PM. Watching him being physically and acoustically drowned out in Downing Street summed up his premiership – washed out and tone deaf.
The Conservatives in government have pushed the standards of public life down so low that a rattle snake could not squeeze under their bar
It was ironic listening to him accuse Sir Keir Starmer for having no plans when Sunak, even with the benefit of a weather forecast, did an outside press conference in a downpour without the precaution of an umbrella.
A jinxed Jonah, he has been ill served by a third rate, characterless cabinet, whose members would make Beano readers look like Nobel laureates.
As the song goes, things can only get better.
