From Truss to Sunak: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

A political party having to elect a third party leader and Prime Minister in three months knows it has lost all credibility and the only decent thing to do is call a General Election and let the people decide. Not this one.

It opts for another popularity contest to which none of us are invited.

The mission - to find someone less incompetent than Liz Truss.

Ordinarily, that shouldn’t detain them any longer than the time it takes to brew a cuppa, but this is a cabinet of the talentless; pitifully poor politicians completely detached from the brutal harshness facing so many people this winter.

And so we had the nauseating prospect of the return of Boris Johnson - a man who debased the office of Prime Minister, who partied while people mourned the death of their loved ones, and signed off with one of the least gracious exit speeches ever heard on the steps of Downing Street.

When Truss’s primary school economics plan was shredded he made his move.

He phoned MPs to assure them things had changed. Those calls were made from the Dominican Republic where he was on holiday while they were at work. You couldn’t make it up.

Johnson was the man to unite the party, declared Boris himself.

The only party he could united is one he turns up at with a dozen bottles of red and a karaoke machine …

He flew back from the Caribbean without no explanation while he was sunning himself when parliament was sitting - those pesky rules really are for others - and declared he had “cleared the high hurdle of 102 nominations” to stand as Prime Minister.

Only, he hadn’t. The number was out at around 57. Even Trussonomics couldn’t make that equation stand up.

No sooner had he landed back in the UK and given everything an un-necessary shake, he decided he couldn’t be bothered standing after all.

Politics feels like a game to him - something to occupy him between holidays.

The man has zero substance, no evident desire to lead by example, and no interest in detail or strategy.

So, Rishi Sunak, the man who couldn’t beat Truss, is now our third Prime Minister in 50 days. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. And the one before that.

Sunak promised to do things differently - conveniently sidestepping his own role at the very heart of Johnson’s Partygate chaos - and promptly re-appointed Suellla Braverman as Home Secretary, just one week after she had to resign from that role after she was found to have breached security roles.

Braverman - who had been the shortest serving Home Secretary since 1834 - is even more charmless than her predecessor Pritti Patel. That takes some doing.

Remember her contemptible words: “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”

Nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed at the heart of this squalid government.

Sunak should be pushed – dragged kicking and screaming if necessary – into calling a General Election.