POLITICAL REALITIES

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is about to learn the truth of Enoch Powell’s now famous adage that all political careers end in failure.

Some may say attaining the Prime Ministership is scarcely failure but that’s surely only so if one is actually elected by the public and not his colleagues, as in Rishi’s case.

Furthermore, the coming scale of his defeat, at least according to the polls, will amount to a catastrophic failure.

I initially rather liked Rishi’s charm and upfront nature but he lost me in his pursuit of the ludicrous Rwanda proposal which to date has cost British taxpayers the best part of a billion pounds in diverse costs, including massive bribes to the Rwandan government.

Sending desperate Syrian boat people to central Africa was always an absurd proposition.

Only one ever went, flown commercially with £20,000 of taxpayer money in his pocket as an inducement. Doubtless, he’s subsequently moved on to a more amenable location.

Our political system, both with local and central government, with rare exceptions, thrusts fairly ordinary, hitherto unknown people, into the limelight.

That becomes highly addictive, wrecks their lives including frequently their marriages, a lesson only finally realised when Enoch’s great truth eventually smacks them in the face and they find themselves, now yesteryear’s man or woman, now back to their former obscurity.

Still, if it takes a terrible toll on participants, the best that can be said for it is it’s better than the alternative, namely dictatorships.