Dead man walking
There are several problems with being a liar.
The first is that it much easier to get away with if you pretend that you are a good natured but bumbling chap, who everyone would love to have a pint with even though they wouldn’t believe anything you said. Even that has a shelf life, as B. Johnson found out.
The second problem, as B. Johnson also discovered, is that in politics you need a whole host of people to stay loyal to you and repeat and/or defend the lies.
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, you have to remember your lies and if you lie again it must be consistent with the previous lies. Which brings us to Mr. Sunak.
As I have already said, to believe the first lie about HM Treasury signing off a Tory party claim about Labour is impossible. There is after all even a letter from the head of HM Treasury saying it is not true.
Then we come to the PM leaving Normandy early to record an interview with ITV defending that lie. The PM is now trying to tell us that he was always planning to leave early, and he didn’t fly back in a panic to lie to ITV. But that is in itself unbelievable.
Why was he already planning to snub our few remaining veterans, not represent the nation at a hugely important event, miss a photo-op with world leaders in the middle of an election campaign and the chance to kow-tow with the great and good and show that the UK still mattered? What was the pressing engagement that he knew about weeks in advance that could not be moved?
Well, there obviously wasn’t one, so maybe he hurried back because he didn’t really see the point of going, because the French now claim he wasn’t planning to turn up at all and had to be persuaded to come for 1/2 a day. Which Mr. Sunak says is not true.
Doubtless he has the correspondence to prove that, the French certainly seem to think they do. Calling the French government liars to cover up your own lies is not a clever move, they might release the paper work.
On a minor point Mr. Sunak also lied because he had promised to suspend campaigning for the duration of the D-Day commemorations, and instead flew back early to campaign, so another lie.
All of this happened because his first lie was so blatant, inept and stupid that theTory party has had to spend a week trying to fix the disastrous consequences and has dug itself ever deeper into a hole.
A clever politician would have laughed it off, apologised, blamed a minion and moved on. But Mr. Sunak is obviously not a clever politician, in fact he seems to be a very stupid and inept one.
If this was not all happening during a general election campaign the letters would already be with the 1922 committee, demanding he go. That can’t happen, but what happens if one or more cabinet ministers admit that they know the PM is lying and Normandy was the last straw?
That is what did for Johnson in the end.
Sunak is a dead man walking, he knows it and his party knows it; his leadership is over the moment the polls shut, even if he wins. If any Tory ministers had an ounce of decency it would be over sooner.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
I know our parliament works (insofar as it does actually work) on the principle that there is a viable opposition in place, but personally I hope that the entire Tory party is a dead party walking. Any usefulness and decency they may ever have had is now long gone.