Meet Rishi Sunak, the sulking schoolboy guarding his Marbles

His actions around the Parthenon Marbles - or Elgin Marbles for anyone of a persisting imperial bent - were those of a spoiled infant: puerile, petty, rude, cowardly, pathetic. He embarrassed himself, but worse he embarrassed an entire nation, making Britain seem as stupid, craven and yellow-bellied as our supposed leader.

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A big, scary boy upset Rishi, you see. He was due to meet Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. However, Sunak pulled a massive tantrum - perhaps scweaming and scweaming in the Cobra Room until he was sick - and cancelled the appointment because Mitsotakis raised the Marbles in an interview with Laura Kuenessberg.

Result? Greece offended, and other nations bewildered at such idiotic contempt for diplomacy.

The scene-setter needs deconstructed, though. First, Downing Street claims - and "claims" is doing some heavy lifting in this sentence - that the meeting was cancelled as Mitsotakis had promised not to publicly discuss the Marbles.

Problem one for Schoolboy Sunak: Greece denies any assurance were given. I don’t know about you, but I could be sitting with Baron Von Munchausen, Walter Mitty, Arthur Daley and the entire Tory Cabinet and it would be the Baron, Wally and Arty I’d be nodding along in agreement with … Tories lie the way ordinary humans breathe. It’s a Conservative reflex, like getting dinged on the knee by your doctor with a wee hammer.

Problem Two: if any assurance was given - which nobody really even pretends to believe, apart from the most craven Tory brown-nosers - what was Mitsotakis supposed to do when Kuenssberg asked him about the Marbles on TV?

For it was the reporter who raised the matter, not the politician. Should Mitsotakis have made a total idiot of himself in front of his own nation by refusing to speak about a subject the Greeks care passionately about? Should he leap in front of political bullets for Timothy Tiny-Trousers in Downing Street?

If Mitsotakis had gone the "no comment" route, he could have put his own political career at risk. But again, this is an entirely hypothetical thought-experiment as no assurance was given, say the Greeks.

Problem Three: again, if any non-existent assurance was given and then broken, is throwing a hissy fit and running off to your bedroom to write angry poems in your diary the way to address a minor diplomatic spat?

Surely, turning a minor diplomatic spat into a major diplomatic spat is itself proof that Sunak is entirely unfit to hold public office. He’s not fit to be a manager in any way, shape or form if this is how he deals with conflict, let alone manage Britain.

Problem four: the issue of the Marbles isn’t going away, even if Sonny Sunak hides under his Paddington pillow pretending it’s not happening. This is an ugly imperial hangover that needs addressed.

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But then again, perhaps this pitiful Prime Minister, clinging on to the sodden fag-end of a ruined, useless, nasty, stupid and dangerous Government, doesn’t really want the issue to go away. Maybe he wants a little "dead cat" culture war to deflect from what a thoroughly useless specimen he is as a politician.

That strategy - the culture war deflection strategy - presents real problems in itself for Sunak, as most people aren’t on his side. Splendidly, YouGov did some quick turnaround polling on the day the story broke: 49% say the Marbles should be returned, only 15% say they should stay; 66% think Sunak made the wrong decision cancelling his Mitsotakis meeting, only 11% think it’s the right call.

Evidently, none of this matters to the Tories, so full-on belly-down in the dust you couldn’t get a Rizla paper beneath them. Gillian Keegan, amusingly known as the "Education Secretary", gormless-grinned into cameras, telling us: “The Elgin Marbles are actually protected under the law and under that law they have to stay in the British Museum.”

There’s so much to unpack in that one box of idiocy. Can I, then, go round to my neighbour’s house steal their Ikea paintings, hang them on my wall, and then say "these paintings I stole are now protected under laws - which I wrote - and so must stay in my house"… the house of a sticky-fingered thief?

Perhaps the Greeks should rock up to England, remove Stonehenge, reassmble it on Mykonos and say "it’s ours now".

Maybe Greece could just come and annex the entire town of Elgin. It’s only fair. Legally.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Image: PA)

When did Tories get all precious about the law, anyway? Unless I dreamt it, I’m sure refugees are meant to be protected by these law things too, and the UK Government doesn’t seem remotely bothered. Also, didn’t the Supreme Court rule proroguing Parliament illegal? Was I dreaming again?

But hark at me, wittering on about legality, like some concerned citizen.

Incidentally, Labour behaved pretty shamelessly in this fiasco too. Shadow cabinet member Anneliese Dodds simply offloaded all responsibility for returning the Marbles to the British Museum. "Not our call, guv." Just rewrite the damn law, it’s not hard.

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Britain nicked the Marbles, so the British Government needs to deal with the issue and the only moral position is to return the bloody things. If we don’t, we’re simply saying looting other countries is fine and dandy.

We live in the Tech Age. Returned Marbles could still be seen - digitally, three-D printed, whatever - at the British Museum.

And if return leads to a run of demands about other stolen goods, including artefacts in Scotland, like the Benin Bronzes, well fine. Nations have every right to demand back what was theirs in the first place. Why is this difficult?

For now, though, let’s leave Rishi, sulking in his short trousers, sitting on the rug in front of the fire in Number 10’s nursery, playing with his marbles, and waiting for matron to arrive and read him his favourite bedtime story: Pinocchio.