WELL I guess the lesson of our politics is that things can always get worse. And worse they did get.
Liz Truss’s defenestration yesterday was as inevitable as it was excruciating.
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Her robotic reading of her resignation speech outside No10 was the latest 100mph car crash to smash headfirst into an increasingly pathetic government in its death throes.
Truss’s day had — once again — started pitifully.
Fed-up voters had awoken to the news of how this increasingly sorry excuse for an administration had behaved.
MPs were reported to have been manhandled by their colleagues in order to make them vote for the government’s plans to allow fracking.
Tory MPs had been “bullied and intimidated” during appalling scenes, all captured by cameras for the public to see in all their vulgar glory.
The speaker of the house launched an investigation. Fury abounded.
Another day, another disgrace from a government that now staggers by from hour to hour.
British politics — and by extension Britain — has become a global laughing stock.
We are not acting as one of the most influential democracies in the world.
We have become that which we used to mock — the southern European countries like Italy and Greece, with their chaotic governments and yo-yo-ing economies.
Indeed, one left-leaning news magazine went as far to lampoon us as “Britaly” in a humiliating front page cartoon.
How on earth did we get here?
The hapless Liz Truss and her cabal of incompetents must take her share of the blame. But the problem goes deeper.
If there’s one thing that unites them it is sheer selfishness
One explanation is that this has been growing for a long time.
That for some years politics has not attracted the brightest or best in our country.
Other people point to the expenses scandal — others blame the Brexit vote in 2016.
There’s something to all these explanations, and more.
But if there is one thing that unites all the problems it is the sheer selfishness of so many of those in political office.
Consider the way that David Cameron and George Osborne behaved in 2016.
They advised the country to vote one way and the country did not obey them.
So both immediately resigned — and not just resigned but disappeared.
‘Actions of patriots’
For days they left the country leaderless and fearful. Were these the actions of patriots?
No, they were the actions of people who wanted to get ahead in politics and do well for themselves.
It wasn’t much better in the Theresa May years, though at least May decided to stay in Parliament after the mess she caused.
Boris Johnson looked like he might provide a clean sweep after his historic victory in 2019.
But he governed selfishly.
And so the Conservative party did what it seems to do best — throwing the country into turmoil, having a leadership contest and electing someone who they then tried to oust within weeks. What on Earth is going on?
All discipline seems to have broken down.
On Wednesday night a furious Conservative MP — Charles Walker — seemed on the verge of tears as he angrily described the goings-on in Parliament that night.
‘Half-competent’
And Labour are no better. Although Keir Starmer is beginning to look half-competent, his party too is a shambles.
Filled with virulent non-entities, the attitude of the average Labour MP now seems to be a sort of shocked superiority.
What so many of these politicians seem to have lost — on all sides in Parliament — is the idea that they are there to serve the country and its people.
Do any of them — especially in the Conservative party — remember that fact?
While they play a game of permanent leadership races, have any of them got the country at heart?
Or is it all about advancing themselves and getting their way?
Our country is being hideously governed. And the problem with that is that we have serious problems we have to address.
One truth is that many of them find the chaos useful — or think they’ll find it useful sometime soon.
I suspect Boris Johnson will be watching the current turmoil gleefully.
As will Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer and all the other Conservative and Labour MPs who are united only in one thing — which is believing that one day the top job will fall to them.
Well they are wrong. While they play their games of personal advancement, our country is suffering — badly.
Our MPs have shown they are world-class at thinking about themselves.
Here’s an idea, for Liz Truss’s successor and for the whole rotten lot of them.
How about thinking of us?
