Daily Mirror columnist Brian Reade on the actions of two former prime ministers who, he says, are so enslaved by their egos they just can’t let go of their fight for power
I’ve always believed there was some truth in Billy Connolly’s assessment of people who seek a career in politics.
“The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one,” said the Big Yin.
Of course, there are some fine politicians who quietly dedicate themselves to creating a better world, but there are far more who are only in the job to boost their profile and their bank balance. And who are so enslaved by their ego they can’t let it go.
Take Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who after failing so dismally their own MPs kicked them out of Downing Street, are now attempting to force themselves back centre-stage in a bid to repair what is left of their disgraced legacies.
One year on from the invasion of Ukraine, the scary duo popped up in the Commons like a pair of fungal-brained zombies from The Last of Us to launch Operation Get Me Back In The Spotlight, demanding we move closer to a Third World War by sending all of our fighter jets to President Zelensky.
The irony with Truss being that she so bankrupted our economy we haven’t got a defence pot to urinate in, so if we did hand over our most expensive military hardware we wouldn’t have the money to replace it. Truss’s skin must be thicker than five coats of tarmac because, after the abject humiliation she suffered last year, any self-respecting person would have emigrated to the depths of the Borneo jungle never to resurface.
And the humiliation keeps coming. This week, senior Tory George Eustice said the lamentable deals Truss negotiated as trade minister were “all about getting press releases out”, and a poll of 1,500 British adults showed 65% believed she is directly responsible for the woeful state of our economy.
As for Johnson, taking a break from his multi-million pound speaking tour to try to bring down Rishi Sunak and crawl through the back door of Downing Street, a Nobel Prize for Shamelessness should be initiated in his dishonour. He won the 2019 General Election selling a very bad Brexit deal that included the Northern Ireland Protocol.
“There will be no checks between Northern Ireland and Great Britain,” he told the House to pacify his
Eurosceptic ghouls and the DUP (Dinosaur Unionist Party), knowing full well there would be.
So, to put that right, and to kibosh Sunak’s attempt to negotiate a compromise with Europe, he now demands we rip up the treaty he foisted on us through deception.
He also told us his oven-ready deal would fix the NHS and deliver cheaper energy prices and cheaper food. The reality is the NHS is broken, our food is dearer, supermarket shelves lie empty, and energy is so expensive many of us can’t afford to switch the oven on.
Ah yes, we truly are living the dream in the post-EU “sunlit uplands” that Johnson promised us.
Meanwhile, us taxpayers are on the hook for another five-figure bill to cover Johnson’s legal fees in the inquiry into illegal Downing Street parties during Covid, having already given him £220,000.
It is hard to decide what is more tragic: Truss and Johnson’s inability to leave the political stage with grace and humility.
Or the reputational damage the sight of them still inflicts on Britain.
