No 10 asked the Queen to save us from Boris – shame they didn’t do the same with Truss
New revelations about No 10 reaching to the Palace in desperation surprise nobody, writes Tom Peck. And when it comes to Starmer... well, nothing he can do to assist his cause can come close to the job Truss and Johnson are doing for him

Queen Elizabeth II welcoming the newly-elected leader of the Conservative party Boris Johnson during an audience in Buckingham Palace
It is still not a year since Rishi Sunak promised to bring “integrity, professionalism and accountability” back to government. He is, we are told, annoyed that he doesn’t seem to be getting any “credit” for such things as the Windsor Framework, which very partially makes up for a small amount of the damage of Brexit, of which he was and is very much in favour.
Presumably, he is also annoyed with himself for having, say, been fined by the police for breaking the law twice in a matter of months. He must be a bit disappointed that his big barge for asylum seekers had to be evacuated because there was an extremely virulent form of Legionnaires’ disease in the water supply; frustrated that schools are falling down and teachers and hospital workers are on strike and terrorists sellotape themselves to the underside of food delivery vans and drive out of prison through the front gate.
But even if none of these things, nor all of the so many other things, had happened, one has to think that Rishi Sunak would still be annoyed. Annoyed, that is, with the overwhelming insistence with which his party simply won’t let anybody forget how off-the-charts hopeless and outright insane they have been for so very long, and how they would be again if given a whisker of a chance.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies