I’ve never been keen on politicians coming out with expressions such as “in the name of all that’s good, go, and go now."

No matter how incompetent and venal a government and its leading figures have been, it has been duly elected by the British people. Under our unwritten constitution, the decision as to whether to call an election sits with the Prime Minister, and them alone.

They cannot exceed five years, but at a moment they feel best, obviously when they think they might win, they get into the official car, turn left out of Downing Street, second left at Trafalgar Square, into the Mall and pull up at Buckingham Palace to have a word with the King. Ultimately, that’s how our democracy works, and sometimes through gritted teeth I endorse that. People saying “Go Now” are wasting their own time. Yet over the last few years, I have almost said this myself twice.

The first was two years ago in November 2021. Then, a Shropshire MP Owen Paterson was found by the MPs’ standards watchdog to have broken lobbying rules. He was on £8,333 per month for 16 hours work as a consultant for Randox Laboratories. Okay, nothing unlawful there, if ill-advised. But he used his influence as an MP to directly lobby the Food Standards Agency and the Department for International Development on behalf of Randox using his Commons office and stationery to do so.

The cross-party Commons Standards Committee recommended a 30-day ban on his attending Parliament, but rather than supporting this the likes of Jacob Rees Mogg and PM Boris Johnson implied due process had been broken and that rather than Paterson being banned the Committee itself should be torn apart.

Ultimately, Paterson resigned, and the LibDems won his seat. However, at a personal level this was when I started to feel 'Go, go now.' Our country was being led by men with all the integrity of Donald Trump. His special appetite is for denouncing lawyers, judges, due processes. Riots at the Senate? Not me guv, them. Now this seam of self-serving amorality was running through one of the once great parties of Europe.

But I held my tongue until this week, a second occasion of shame for the UK, when PM Sunak decided to cancel a meeting with the PM of Greece, someone actually from a similar political background. Now, the Conservatives are not just humiliating our country domestically, they are making us a world laughing stock. We must take for granted that all their fraudulent claims about the ease of post-Brexit trade deals have led to an economy which has shrunk rather than grown. Where is that Trade Deal with the USA, Boris/Liz/Rishi?

But the thing we were always good at, really good, world-respected, was diplomacy. This saves lives, creates opportunities, protects the values of civilised countries. Yet just because the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis has dared to flag that he will raise the subject of whether the Parthenon (Elgin) Marbles might be returned to Athens, Mr Sunak has gone into a sulk and cancelled. Even though Mr Mitsotakis is already in London, and has indeed already met Keir Starmer.

So that’s it for me. A country which was our ally in two wars, where millions of us travel receiving wonderful hospitality, which plays a key strategic role in the Med at a time when it is at risk, from the coast of Gaze to the Black Sea, Rishi snubs a key NATO ally. He’s lost his marbles.

Go, sir, and go now. Your government is now doing only harm.