Incompetence Knows No Bounds

When he eventually gets the boot, I imagine they will have to prise Christopher Grayling's fingers one by one from his office door and carry him out of the building less the carpet is damaged by his hands frantically trying to grip the shag pile. Such is his desperation to cling to his post as Transport Secretary. That the incompetent minister also looks like a clueless wonder is just an unfortunate coincidence.

Grayling’s list of failings while in office is long and lengthy and includes industrial disputes, botched train timetables and the East Coast rail line fiasco. He was just as hapless in his previous position at the Ministry of Justice. Topping his list of calamitous decisions was awarding a £14 million contract to run a post-Brexit freight ferry service to a firm with no ferries. It takes a very special kind of stable genius to be able to do that. When it was also pointed out to him that the firm’s terms and conditions had been copied and pasted from a takeaway delivery service, his reply was to say that was completely fine.

The contract with Seaborne Freight was cancelled this week, on grounds that you may find surprising -not being able to deliver on the contract it was given. But even then the one-man political disaster zone still tried to explain why in his opinion a shipping company with no ships isn’t really that much of a problem. Politicians in the Commons had a field day at his expense.

But he has at least one supporter and that is the Prime Minister who expressed her full confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport. Crikey! How big a screw up does he have to be before she entertains the smallest of doubts that he might not be the person for the job, any government job? Although having said that her words could be about as supportive as those of a football club chairman backing a losing manager who is fired the next day.