And Let Us Have Done With You

Praised to the skies though it was, Boris Johnson’s book on Churchill was so bad that he quite possibly does not know the line of Leo Amery’s that David Davis quoted, much less that it came originally from Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament.

Thankfully, by the time that Johnson’s book on Shakespeare came out, if it ever did, then no reviewer would feel any need to suck up to him, because there is going to be a new Prime Minister before there is a General Election, and that is going to be a Conservative whether we like it or not. Rishi Sunak is the best available option.

Michael Gove’s foreign policy views remain unconscionable. Liz Truss wants to prevent further losses to the Liberal Democrats, and to take back the seats already lost, by abandoning levelling up and by once again rendering it impossible through renewed conformity to Margaret Thatcher’s Single Market and to the Customs Union that Britain joined while Thatcher was in the Cabinet.

But while Sunak may or may not have his heart in levelling up, he is committed to retaining the full Brexit that makes it possible and for which the areas that cast the decisive votes for Brexit therefore voted, and he is prepared to pursue levelling up in order to offset losses to the Lib Dems with gains of seats that had voted for Jeremy Corbyn both times. At Hartlepool, the Conservatives have already picked up one such seat, showing that it can be done. Sunak may be the best of a bad bunch. But he is that.