More Tory upheaval

 More Tory upheaval.

Most of us thought  we'd seen it all. When Boris Johnson was finally driven out somewhat shamefacedly from 10 Downing Street there was a private hope that we'd never see such blundering incompetence ever again in any form. Johnson was farcical, comical, seemingly oblivious to the outside world and convinced that everything which needed his serious attention to detail would have to be reduced to anecdotes about children's character theme parks. 

Then when Covid 19 finally departed our everyday news agenda and things had returned to some semblance of normality Johnson was once again exposed as a sham and charlatan. He fumbled and bumbled his way through another sleazy succession of cock ups, criminal misdemeanours, hesitation, feeble excuses, delaying tactics, lousy timing and just an embellishment of the truth. In other words he was a blatant liar. 

Eventually he was whisked into hospital with severe symptoms of Covid 19 and the nation was worried about the first Prime Minister dying while in office. But Johnson pulled through and just carried on with the business of standing by his Downing Street lecturn trying desperately to make head or tail of viruses, complex graphs, medical science and a global virus none of us could get our heads around. So he muddled his way through the labyrinthine complexities of the dreaded virus and expected the great British public to just listen, wait very patiently and at some point, things would get better if only very slowly.

Then a woman by the name of Liz Truss shoved aside Johnson quite unceremoniously and, just a touch, sadistically it might be said, and we all know what happened next. Truss, or so it seemed, quite embarrassingly, was Prime Minister for all of five minutes. But hold on that's an exaggeration. It was about a month or a month and a couple of days but by now a majority of us were despairing of everything connected to British politics. What is about politicians and their innate capacity to shoot themselves in the feet? Truss, we discovered, revealed a whole succession of dodgy financial proposals which were so shockingly unacceptable or feasible that she had to go and go quickly, pronto. In fact immediately. 

Yesterday the latest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Rishi Sunak, who always looked as if he couldn't wait to get his hands to the keys for 10 Downing Street, did his own dramatic spot of sacking one of his Cabinet ministers. It always looked ominous for Suella Braverman since Braverman had so antagonised and infuriated Sunak that he probably had no alternative. Braverman was one of those ambitious careerists who felt the only way she could climb up the greasy pole to political power was by sneaking behind her boss's back and writing a damaging and derogatory newspaper article about the police. 

This morning Braverman was out on her ear and it was time to sling her hook. You know which way to go Suella. That's the exit door and out into the world of political obscurity she went. Earlier on in the year she'd compiled the most radical solution to illegal migration of people fleeing war and persecution. Send them to Rawanda. Now that's a good idea. How very inspired. There was no room at the inn in Britain and the accommodation would have been spartan and basic anyway. So off you to go to Rawanda and we want nothing to do with you.

For the next couple of months she stood her ground defiantly, enthusiastically supported Sunak's repeated mantra of Stopping the Boats at source and just became an annoying troublemaker. Yesterday she was attacked by the cynics who believed she was just a pain in the neck. She wrote her deeply hurtful and insulting piece to the Times newspaper and thought she'd shake everybody up again. 

What she may have overlooked were the consequences of her actions. Amid accusations of virulent racism and hate crime, Braverman was regarded as a loose cannon just waiting to go off. Yesterday represented one too many controversies. Today she was replaced by James Cleverly as Home Secretary. Cleverly is the bearded politician who may well be one of the few figures to emerge from this fiasco with his sanity intact and if anything an enhanced profile. This may be the right time for conciliatory bridge building with the Metropolitan police.

Now if this had been a TV sitcom you could have sworn this was the very latest development in the history of British politics. This morning David Cameron who used to be Prime Minister some time ago, today became Foreign Secretary but he committed the cardinal sin of disagreeing with Brexit and all its repercussions. Cameron was the one who stood by his principles and dug his heels in when the whole of Britain couldn't make up its mind about Britain's continued presence in the European Union. So when he lost a referendum that he knew would follow, he swallowed his pride and just admitted that he may have got it completely wrong.

So David Cameron, he of the Eton school privileged educational background, is back on the front green benches and you simply can't keep a good man down. With a year to go before a General Election in the United Kingdom the chances are that the Tories will have to get cracking on the pressing issues of the day because this doesn't look good at the moment. The Conservative party have been in residence at 10 Downing Street for 13 years and may have outstayed their welcome.

The game of political musical chairs seems to be getting funnier by the day. No sooner than one crisis seemed to have cleared then the Tories find themselves in another humiliating predicament. The truth of course is that the Prime Minister is running out of allies he thought he could trust and 13 years in Government is more than enough for those who are rapidly running out of patience.

You remember that iconic day when Margaret Thatcher left 10 Downing Street in a pool of tears as she ducked into the back seat of her Prime Ministerial car for the last time. Thatcher had trudged her way dutifully through 11 years as Prime Minister and was then the subject of the classic betrayal. Her gang of hitherto loyal Cabinet ministers had taken enough and couldn't bring themselves to back her again. So she drifted away into the night like a woman scorned and back into the world of critical observer from the back benches. For 1990 read 2023 although current incumbent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may think that barring the most unlikeliest of scenarios, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer may be walking into 10 Downing Street sooner rather than later.