After 13 years of Tory rule, breaking up is not hard to do - Vladimir McTavish

Pupils in England should be coming back to school on Monday but instead they are breaking up. Quite literally, due to some very dodgy concrete bought by the Tories. This has led Keir Starmer to claim that “the cowboys are running the country”.

Rishi Sunak leaves 10 Downing Street to take part in the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons

Rishi Sunak accused the Labour leader of “making political capital” out of the story, as if it were some kind of natural disaster or Act of God, rather than the result of 13 years of spending cuts by his government

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan spat the dummy when she was off-air but still being recorded by Sky News. She ranted “Does anyone ever say, ‘You know you’ve done a f***ing good job’ ?”

No, of course they don’t say that. For the very good reason that nobody thinks she is doing a f***ing good job.”

We have had some dreadful Tory ministers since 2010, but nothing to compare with this current crop of talentless chancers.

None of the current Cabinet would look out of place as contestants on The Apprentice, Sunak himself included. They all have the look of small time con artists aspiring to work in middle management in the retail sector.

None of them appears to have knowledge, interest or experience in the areas covered by their brief. Take the new Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, about whom many former military big- hitters have expressed concern. Not only is he unlikely to know one end of a tank from another, Shapps looks like he really ought to be the manager of a branch of Carphone Warehouse in Slough. However, beneath this unbelievably dull, bland exterior lurks a would-be snake oil salesman.

A few years ago, when already an MP, Shapps lied in an LBC interview about not having a second job, despite owning a number of companies which operated get-rich-quick schemes. This included a business self-help guide Stinking Rich 3 which claimed it would make buyers “a ton of cash before Christmas” and a web sales business How To Corp which claimed that clients who paid $200 for its software would “make $ 20,000 in 20 days or your money back”

At the time he denied that he had a second job as he was trading under an assumed name, Michael Green. Perhaps he should also have used an assumed name for his political career.

There is an honourable tradition in the armed forces of giving people obscene and embarrassing nicknames. With a surname like Shapps, I reckon it won’t take the wags on the parade ground long to come up with one for him.

Through no fault of his own, he has an utterly laughable surname. It sounds like Cockney rhyming slang for an unpleasant bowel condition. I can imagine it being used as an excuse to phone in sick for work. “I’m sorry I can’t come into the office today, I’ve been up all night with a dose of the Grant Shapps”

Equally it could be the sales pitch for some quack remedy claiming “We’ll rid you of the Grant Shapps in ten days or your money back guaranteed.”

Hardly fitting for Defence Secretary. Putin is hardly likely to be Shapping himself with Grant in charge of the MOD.