Ex-minister gets a sinking feeling as he abandons ship – by mistake

HE MISSED the boat when he failed to put himself forward for the Labour leadership.

Now former home Secretary Alan Johnson, 68, has missed an even bigger boat, Cunard’s Queen elizabeth cruise ship.

the ex Labour mP was holidaying on board the luxury ocean liner on a 14-day Baltic Cruise and was booked as the celebrity speaker to entertain his 2,092 fellow travellers.

en route back to Britain, the ship docked for a few hours on Wednesday in gothenberg, where the Labour grandee alighted for some sightseeing with his wife, Carolyn Burgess.

Unfortunately when he returned to the Swedish port he was aghast to see the ship sailing into the distance — without him.

he had to fly back to the UK in a t- shirt and a pair of shorts at his own expense.

‘Watching that boat sail away from gothenberg was the most depressing moment in my life,’ he told me from his home after arriving back in Britain yesterday.

‘Usually the ship sails at about 5:30pm but this time it was 4 o’clock. We should have known. It was our fault and then we got lost in gothenberg — the shuttle bus had gone. We were both distraught.

‘ my wife is entitled to not be speaking to me for quite a fair amount of time, particularly because her make-up was on board, our money, all our clothes. We just had what we stood in. All I had was a debit card.

‘But Cunard were nice enough to leave our passports with the Port Authority after fetching them from the cabin.’

his absence meant his fellow travellers missed out on the second of his speaking engagements on thursday. On monday 800 people heard him talk about his memoirs.

So has the ship sailed for Johnson’s lucrative cruise-liner gigs? ‘I think they’ll know we were punished for it,’ says Johnson.

‘ I can assure you it wasn’t an attempt to claim asylum in the european Union before Brexit.’

his predicament caused much amusement on board. ‘Clearly, like so many Labour mPs, he thought he could walk on water,’ joked a fellow traveller.

‘On this occasion he couldn’t.’ every cloud, as they say . . .