Cheap policy off-cuts posing as prime steak

As a bulging suitcase packed full of Co-op vino clattered through the Downing Street gates and over the threshold of Number 10 all those months ago, it’s unlikely whichever aide was pulling it could have predicted this.

It’s even less likely that Shelley WilliamsWalker, the Prime Minister’s head of operations, thought about the long-term consequences as she broke Wilf Johnson’s swing or DJ-ed downstairs.

Everyone huddled in that basement had probably lost all memory of it, partly due to the rapidly-emptying, specially-purchased wine fridge but mainly into the rich soup of work shindigs that peppered their calendars throughout 2020 and 2021.

Their sense of security was built on elitism - the idea people of their ilk, many of whom have ridden into a job on the crest of a wave of generous family donations, always get away with it.

They might escape again or they could become the latest sacrificial lambs of Boris Johnson’s bumbling two-year tenure.

But from one type of red meat to the next and the operation literally called just that.

Operation Red Meat is a hastily shoved together scheme to airlift a marooned

PM to safety while distracting the circling public with juicy chunks of policy.

As the rescue chopper hovered Nadine Dorries flung out the BBC licence fee announcement.

Then Priti Patel hurled down a plan to get the Navy to intercept asylum seekers off the Kent coast.

Neither has much substance. They’re cheap off-cuts dressed up as prime steaks.

If the Navy takes to the sea they will just be doing the job Border Force is already. But that’s not the point - it sounds beefy.

But by the time anyone notices, Johnson will have been spirited away.

They might escape again or they could become the latest sacrificial lambs of Boris Johnson’s bumbling two-year tenure