When I was five years old, I didn’t have a clue who the Prime Minister was.
My son, however, was five in 2020, so he’d learned the name Boris Johnson by about the third of those 5pm lockdown press conferences we had to watch to find out what was going on.
He also had a pretty solid grasp of his parents’ opinion of the man, picking up subtle clues from the not always child friendly terms being screamed at the telly.
One day, for home-schooling, Albie had to make sentences incorporating certain words, and it was amusing but not really surprising that when the word was ‘naughty’ he chose the preface ‘The priminister Boris Jonson is...’ Out of the pencils of babes.
When I told my son that ‘Jonson’ had left Downing Street as he ran out of school on July 7, 2022, he cheered and punched the air.
Here, at last, was the just, Disney movie ending he’d been conditioned to expect: the baddie getting the comeuppance he deserved – and also a handy, high-profile reminder for all children that truth matters. Humiliated and defeated, Boris would now slink off into the who cares where, lesson well and truly learned.
But that’s not quite where the story ends, is it? Where he actually slunk off to was all around the world, to give speeches which meant he raked in five million pounds in the six months after leaving office. That’s not including the £84,000 a year he earned as an MP, of course.
And rather than learning his lesson, Johnson acted like a petulant five year old himself, throwing a tantrum and resigning from Parliament when found to have repeatedly lied over Partygate.
But never mind all that, because now we have a shiny new Prime Minister. Someone who promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level”.
A goodie who would change the rotten course Johnson had set, and definitely put the weight of his power and office behind there being consequences for such dastardly dishonesty, to set a fine, upstanding example.
Hooray! So where was Rishi Sunak during the parliamentary vote on Johnson’s lies on Monday? Nowhere to be seen.
He chickened out entirely, like a pathetic weasel. The dog eating his homework was either a chat with the Swedish PM or a speech at charity Jewish Care’s annual dinner, which – according to the Jewish Chronicle – he delivered before the 9pm vote, in a venue only two miles from Parliament. His alibi is as weak as he is.
The morning after, his spokespeople refused to reveal how he might have voted if he’d had the balls to turn up. Or how he felt about the result. Or anything that might suggest that there could be even a suspicion of a backbone beneath his bespoke designer suit (presumably hand-weaved from hair hardworking Brits have pulled out in despair over the impossible increases in their mortgage payments).
Foolishly, I did expect better of Sunak – as in, that he wouldn’t be quite as appalling as Johnson. Let’s all take a moment to acknowledge what an incredibly low bar that is.
Instead, Rishi Sunak has proved himself to be just as terrible an example for the next generation as Boris Johnson, only in a slightly different way. And he’s only just getting started, of course.
There is an upside though.
At least my son can hitch ‘The priminister Rishi Sunak is…’ to a whole new plethora of adjectives now. And hopefully his school won’t expel him for bad language on a first offence.
