Boris Johnson's government is so sleazy, I almost wish Margaret Thatcher was back – Susan Morrison

She’s rarely wrong, my old mum. For decades, she’s maintained that you always get a better scandal with the Tories.

Boris Johnson gets double thumbs down from Susan Morrison (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Of course, she recalls the days of the dancing girls, naked swimming and Profumo. Oh she says, that was great, but then, she would say that, wouldn’t she?

They’ve got form, the Tories.

Those who sport the blue rosette seem easy meat for lurking temptation. Jonathan Aitken was caught fibbing about who paid the bill for a swanky hotel in Paris. He landed himself a longer stay in jail paid for by the British taxpayer.

Neil Hamilton would ask questions in Parliament for a fistful of dosh in a brown paper envelope, which I considered a bit odd, because I thought an MP’s job was to ask questions in parliament.

When it wasn’t money, it was good old sex. Tory MPs were always great ones for moral wind-bagging in public. In private, they were like the Duracell bunnies of bed-hopping.

The most surprisingly dull politicians turned out to have the most spicy secrets. John Major. A man as boring as a single shade of grey. And then we found out about Edwina Currie.

Mind you, I bet they lived in fear of Mrs Thatcher finding out. I once met a retired civil servant who had worked alongside Thatcher. He told me she was weirdly naive about the seedy side of sex and simply could not understand why people would risk family and career just for a bit of the old slap ‘n’ tickle.

Very unforgiving, was Margaret. Nanny’s iron handbag would descend with a mighty blow at the hint of an indiscretion. Looking at you, Cecil Parkinson. People who could not do their job were similarly dispatched, even if she quite liked them.

That was then, and this is now. We’re all a lot more laid back about sleaze and indiscretion. Well, you have to be when you have a Prime Minister currently on Wife Number Three, with a regiment of ex-girlfriends, and a reluctancy to admit just how many children he actually has.

Tell you what, had Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson been an out-of-work trucker from Sutton Coldfield called Bazza, he’d have been a shoo-in for the late and unlamented Jeremy Kyle show.

Of course Bazza from Sutton Coldfield wouldn’t have decorated his living room with wallpaper at £850 a roll. He couldn’t have afforded it. Neither, it seems, could Boris of Downing Street. The revamp hit the £200,000 mark. Friends had to chip in, and favours given usually expect some sort of return, especially in politics.

We’ve got a government awash with sleaze and ineptitude, from ‘Snogger’ Hancock getting caught having a right old ‘office Christmas party’ grope, to ‘Failing’ Grayling ordering ferries from a company that doesn’t have any… er… ferries.

And now a man most of us had never heard of was caught doing something most of us were unaware of, but because of a spectacularly stupid move in Parliament now all of us know that summat rum was afoot and this bloke was clearly up to no good.

There are times, and I never believed I’d say this, when I almost wish for the return of Thatcher to bring that bag down like Thor’s hammer on these clowns’ heads.

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