Rebecca McQuillan: Welcome to the Tory Game of Thrones spin-off

We discovered to our cost this summer just how tiny and unrepresentative the Tory membership is, and just how much harm they can do, swooning at fanatics and narcissists.

Self-promoters, bullies and over-confident people are to be found in every walk of life, of course, but their progress is often hobbled by HR procedures and colleague disdain.

In the Conservative party they seem to get fast-tracked for promotion.

Are things changing under Rishi Sunak? They are not. The make-up of his cabinet suggests that he regards talent, integrity and accountability as optional extras.

The bar for holding ministerial office, lowered by Theresa May as she tried to keep the zealots on side, was dropped to the floor by Boris Johnson. Under Johnson, right-wing ultras of limited ability like Nadine Dorries and Priti Patel were clapped into key Whitehall departments by civil servants filled with dread.

Under Rishi Sunak, it’s been more of the same.

Can Labour steer us out of this mire? If not, we’re destined to have government-by-goon forever.

Sunak promised “integrity, professionalism and accountability” in his very first speech, but 15 days on, those words sound embarrassingly insincere. Since October 25, hapless ministers have been doing the shuffle of shame through radio studios almost daily, in exactly the same way as they did in the Johnson era, making cringey excuses for the Prime Minister’s decisions – decisions like appointing Alan B’Stard tribute act Gavin Williamson to the cabinet.

Williamson is one of those people whose political longevity is a mystery to anyone outside of his own party. Untrustworthy (he was fired as defence secretary by Theresa May for leaking information from the national security council), unimpressive (he drew fire over his handling of exam grading while education secretary and was subsequently fired) and allegedly a bully (he’s said to have told one civil servant to slit their own throat), Sunak must surely have known enough to see he was a liability. Allegations are surfacing about Williamson’s behaviour as chief whip, where he is said to have made coded threats to MPs by raising information about their private lives. He spoke to MPs in the presence of a pet tarantula that he kept on his desk, which was presumably intended to be intimidating (B’Stard would have liked that – he kept a hand drill in his drawer for such occasions).

Why? Why put someone like that in your cabinet? Because weak Prime Ministers in the modern Tory party must appease members and MPs by giving jobs to inappropriate people. It’s why Theresa May put Johnson, Truss, and Patel in the cabinet, and it’s why compassion-free Suella Braverman was reappointed by Rishi Sunak to one of the great offices of state just six days after resigning from Truss’s government for breaking the ministerial code (by the way, she used personal email for official business not once, but six times).

Sunak shouldn’t have appointed either of them. He should certainly have fired them both by now, but he looks weak if he does and weak if he doesn’t. He let Williamson resign rather than sacking him, and published a letter describing his “great sadness” at the loss, presumably because he can’t afford to make an enemy of Williamson on the back benches.

What surprises about Sunak is quite how much he already sounds like Boris Johnson. In the House of Commons yesterday, flanked by Braverman on one side and Raab on the other, he picked his words carefully, claiming that he hadn’t known of any “specific allegations” about Williamson, which means of course that he knew there were bullying complaints against him when he appointed him (party chairman Jake Berry has confirmed this to be true). Add that to Williamson’s double sacking by previous PMs and Sunak’s judgment looks just as bad as Johnson’s.

He brought it largely on himself. Mr Sunak would like us to forget that he was an ally of Boris Johnson, who presided over a steady slide in standards in public life. Where was Rishi Sunak’s righteous anger a year ago when Boris Johnson tried to undermine the system of parliamentary standards so his friend Owen Paterson could get away with a serious breach of MPs’ ethics rules? Sunak only spoke of the need to do better when the Johnson had backtracked. Where was Mr Sunak’s integrity when Johnson tried to dodge responsibility for presiding over a culture of rule-breaking parties in Downing Street? He was part of that culture of tolerance; he said nothing against Johnson until the very last minute.

There has been a sort of zoological fascination in observing the behaviour of the Brexit eccentrics over the last few years. But this isn’t Big Brother; Gavin Williamson isn’t going back to work in a call centre now he’s exited the cabinet; on past form, he’ll be back in a few months. Regret and self-reproach is so unfashionable.

The BBC described Williamson’s exit as “the first resignation of Rishi Sunak’s premiership”, not even bothering to pretend that there was anything unusual or surprising about it, or indeed that there wouldn’t be others where that came from (please God let the next one be Braverman).

So the chaos hasn’t ended and on current form, we can expect more trouble ahead. This government has overstayed its welcome but must limp on until we voters put it out of its misery.

Then there will be an opportunity for change. Keir Starmer doesn’t have to convene a cabinet of saints to shine by comparison with this lot, but a cabinet of competents. Ministers who stay in spot long enough to know what they are talking about would be a good start. Government has been a game of musical chairs lately and it’s time the music stopped.

As for Rishi Sunak, he needs to look up “integrity” and then review his decisions to date. Is this really the best he can do?