Will our Prime Minister save as many lives as ‘boring’ Clement Attlee did? – Susan Morrison

Boris Johnson is a conniving Flash Harry but plenty of people were happy to vote for him. When will we realise the value of modest hard-workers like Clement Attlee who set up the NHS, wonders Susan Morrison.

Clement Attlee was not a 'flash' politician but he achieved great things. Picture: Getty

AS I write this, I don’t know who has won the race to put a new welcome mat out at the door of No 10, but I can say for sure that this is the most bonkers campaign I think I have ever seen, and I remember Thatcher being verbally walloped by a housewife during a TV phone-in about the sinking of the Belgrano, Gordon Brown being tripped up by a live microphone and Ed Miliband being sabotaged by a bacon roll.

Lest we forget, even the Lib Dems can claim skin in the scandal game. Quite a lot, actually. Who can forget Paddy Pantsdown?

This battle for No 10 has involved a man who doesn’t seem to know how many children he has, has a hazy relationship with the truth and is scared of being interviewed by Andrew Neil.

Yet, people seem to trust this conniving Flash Harry who lies, cheats, and even avoids the issue of a sick child lying on a hospital floor by pocketing a journalist’s mobile phone on camera like a latter-day Artful Dodger. People seem drawn to this man who looks like a failed children’s party clown because he’s exciting. He gets headlines and laughs.

We once produced politicians so boring they could put entire constituencies to sleep. Look at Clement Attlee. Winston Churchill once famously observed of Attlee that he was a modest man “with much to be modest about”.

Clement Attlee was a boring, honest, hard-working man who engineered the birth of the NHS in 1948. Imagine how many lives that dull politician has helped to save in those 70 years.

I hope we tire of the flash lads of politics soon and rediscover our taste for the men and women who just want to make life better for the many, not the few.