‘Tory leadership candidates are third-rate opportunists who put up with Johnson’s lies’ – Brian Reade

Brian Reade despairs at the ‘pitiful nonentities’ vying to be the next leader of Conservative Party as they voted for Brexit and Johnson, then turned a blind eye to billions wasted during Covid

Britons never tire of boasting they are world-beaters at putting on a good show.

And I must admit the current show paralysing our democratic process to enable a tiny cabal to choose the next Prime Minister is in a league of its own. I’m sure this Festival Of Pitiful Nonentities is once again making Britain the envy of the world.

Have you ever seen a more ­nondescript collection of talent-free individuals campaigning to rule your life?

We’re left with that one from the Splash! TV show with a Thatcher tribute hair-do who keeps changing her mind about what a woman is, and a man whose only selling point is he was once in the TA so will fight for Britain (presumably on ­alternate weekends).

A woman whose big pitch is “I’ll ensure men pee in their own toilets” and a vacuous turncoat who sees herself as the new Boudica, telling us only she can defeat Putin. Yet her most memorable video clip amounts to calling cheese imports a “disgrace”.

Plus a billionaire with family tax issues who claims he understands hardship while building a £400k leisure complex at one of his four homes, who ironically says he won’t spin us any fairy tales.

These remaining political titans saw off stiff opposition this week: an offshore trust dabbler worth £100million who asked taxpayers to heat his stables and a landlord who voted against rented homes being made fit for human habitation.

A woman whose pitch amounted to kicking the European Court of Human Rights (yawn, yawn) and a charisma vacuum who oversaw NHS asset-stripping and is most famous for having his name ­mispronounced as female genitalia.

Many of them, we’re told by breathless TV reporters, being backed by “big beasts” like Grant Shapps and David “so cr*p they named him twice” Davis. I’ve seen bigger beasts in an insect park.

The rest of Tory’s Westminster tribe jostle to get before the cameras to tell us why the person they are backing (mainly because they expect a job off them if they win) is the greatest politician since Churchill, who will “get the economy back on track” and “restore trust and integrity in British politics”.

Which leaves us all screaming: “Well where have you been the past 12 years when Cameron and Johnson were wrecking it?”

It’s as though they’ve been beamed in from another planet and had nothing to do with a disgraced leader, a tanking economy and a country viewed globally as a joke.

They supported austerity, which meant ordinary people, unlike them, have not had a pay rise for a decade with the poorest visiting food banks to survive.

Most voted for Brexit and Johnson. They put up with his lies. They turned a blind eye to the billions wasted during Covid, and the Downing Street parties. And they agree with Sunak’s tax rises and apathy towards the cost-of-living crisis.

Yet these third-rate opportunists want us to believe that unlike the last Prime Minister, they ooze integrity and are thus eminently qualified to lead us out of the chaos they helped create.

And you don’t get a chance to tell them what you think because the country’s future at this critical juncture will be decided by 160,000 mostly affluent, ageing, southern English hardcore Tories.

Still, envy of the world though, eh?