Former leaders like Liz Truss just won’t take the hint

What do you do with a toxic ex? Many of us have had to deal with a former partner who will not accept a relationship is over, who seriously believes that everything is redeemable, however vile they have been. It’s even got a name, “hoovering”, where the ex tries to suck you back into an unhealthy dynamic. We may indeed get snookered as we do not like to think that we have made a terrible mistake, it’s not good for our self-worth.

Right now though this dynamic is being played out politically in a bizarre psycho-drama. Rishi Sunak is being stalked by two exes – Liz Truss and Boris Johnson – while Keir Starmer is being haunted still by Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.

Truss must assume the entire country has amnesia the way she thinks she can worm her way back into our affections just three months after she crashed the economy. She simply does not accept she was dumped for those reasons, that many ordinary people are now paying huge mortgages because of her “radical” budget.

She has not played the repentant ex card and come a-calling with a mea culpa or even some garage flowers. Instead she writes a long, delusional article about how it was all everyone’s fault but hers. It’s shameless and suggests she is incapable of feeling even the slightest hint of embarrassment. “Take me back,” she demands, waffling on about her mandate. What mandate? She was never elected, just given the job by the far-Right of a party in meltdown.

It’s shameless. Just like Boris Johnson. He knows his very presence is enough to excite those with the memories of gnats, who have forgotten why he had to go. Sunak will forever be blamed for helping depose him and Johnson will forever dangle the possibility of a comeback. It doesn’t matter whether the party wants him back or not, what matters is the only thing that has ever mattered to him, which is what he wants.

Wasn’t being prime minister enough for Johnson? Could Truss not have waited a year or so before insisting she was right? Apparently not. These people don’t do regret or retire gracefully, their entitlement knows no bounds.

The country is in chaos. Our economy has not bounced back and this is not just because of Covid and Brexit but the long period of Tory neglect. Yet what do these people do? Johnson gets interviewed by his number one fan Nadine Dorries and talks about the difficulties of drawing cows’ feet.

Such behaviour is not restricted to the Right, though I have to say I am enjoying the fragmentation of the Tories no end. To add to the insanity there are still figures like Farage and Tice, the “coulda been contenders” hanging round them threatening to form new parties: again the toxic exes who are dreadfully keen for you to know they have got a new partner.

On the Left, Corbyn has more in common with Johnson and Truss than he would like to admit. He won’t accept that he has been chucked, refusing to tell us whether he will stand as an independent in his Islington constituency.

Starmer dumped him over his reaction to the EHRC report into anti-Jewish abuse in the party. He said his opponents and the media have “dramatically overstated” the problem. He still believes and so do his supporters. In a recent interview (on the News Agents podcast with Lewis Goodall) he once again denied any anti-Semitism. He does not accept unconscious bias or the reasons that someone like Luciana Berger left the party. He thinks there should be a ceasefire in Ukraine and although he says the Russian invasion was wrong does not outrightly condemn it. In other words everything he always thought was right (American imperialism is the fault of everything ) and everyone else is wrong.

He could simply retire as he will be 75 by the time of the next election but these people don’t do that do they? In some parallel universe he did in fact win. I see this on social media all the time.

In this universe you see he is in fact still your boyfriend, whatever you say. His supporters hate Starmer more than they do Sunak.

All of this is profoundly depressing on all sides. Whatever happened to grace in defeat? To understanding you got some things wrong? Why can none of these ex-leaders accept that no means no?

I accept that narcissism is a much overused term. There are many different types of it. But key is understanding how an entire personality is organised to defend oneself against shame. Grandiosity or fantasy is very largely about trying to negate any possible feelings of shame.

Such people are to be avoided in real life and most definitely in politics, yet they are still attempting to run the show.

They cling to the power to which they feel entitled, they cannot let it go even if it means destroying the party or the country they proclaim to love. You see, an abuser will say anything to rekindle a relationship but deep inside these people don’t change. They cannot move on.

The thing is though, the rest of us can. Ghost them – because without our attention they will fade back into the past, where they belong.