Bit late for George’s deal condemnation

FEW things have better exposed what a shoddy lot of politicians we have running the country than this week’s revelation by George Eustice.

You may remember George. He used to be Environment Secretary though made more of a name for himself as being the minister the Government always callen on to shove out through the door and talk to the press when there was bad news about.

He was rather briskly relieved of the cares of office by the last prime minister whose name we can’t forget (even though we may wish to) and who haunted the Cenotaph service as if to remind us all of her short but spectacularly catastrophic tenure at Number 10.

Anyway, apparently on the basis that revenge is a dish best eaten cold, George has now stood up and said that actually that free trade deal Ms Truss struck with Australia and which opens the door to immense tonnages of cheap, low-welfare beef and lamb imports wasn’t such a good thing after all.

Even though Ms Truss said it was. Even though, indeed, he slavishly followed the party line and nodded vigorously as she was saying so – and went on to mount his own stout defence of it.

No, George’s story now is that the UK had given away too much as Ms Truss had put the pressure on the negotiators to conclude a deal so she could strut into the G7 meeting in Cornwall last summer with another feather in her cap.

Proof yet again that Ms Truss’s political career has been one long story of striving for personal advancement, no matter who she has to climb over to achieve it, no matter how much wreckage she leaves in her wake.

The fact that she should never have been allowed within 10 miles of a ministerial desk is now becoming apparent, but only after her disastrous (but thankfully short) tenure as PM has blown a hole below the waterline in the economy and left us all paying more tax to rectify her blundering mistakes.

But look back at other milestones in what Ms Truss (though no one else) evidently regards as a glittering career. Twice she indulged her taste for taxpayer-subsidised foreign travel by leading ‘trade missions’ to China, one of them – she assured everyone on her return – having secured the future of the British pig industry.

A sector, I need not remind you, which continues on a steady course of decline with little prospect of any improvement.

Yet not once did any one of ministerial rank have the guts to call her out, to challenge her thinking. Instead Ms Truss continued on her way buoyed up by self-belief and propelled by self-importance until she was let loose on the country’s finances.

I am not sure who I hold in greater contempt. Liz Truss for having shafted British farmers by opening the door to food imports which could potentially degrade the quality of our children’s diets – or the meek little minister from Cornwall who always did what he was told and only now admits to having harboured doubts.

Doubts which he was too afraid to voice at the time when even an intervention from a political lightweight such as himself might have persuaded others to pause the signing-off and secure better terms for the UK.

George has stood up and said that actually that free trade deal Ms Truss struck with Australia ... wasn’t such a good thing after all