Spare a thought for the losers. Not those like James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat, Steve Barclay. Or Jeremy Hunt and Oliver Dowden, who politely declined all offers to serve in the shadow cabinet. They had their self-worth to consider. Hard to believe, but true nonetheless. Instead, consider those who desired high office – if that isn’t an oxymoron for the shadow cabinet. Take Suella Braverman and Esther McVey. Gutted to have been overlooked. Their credentials impeccable. Both with an unblemished track record of insanity and incompetence. How much more useless did they have to be for Kemi Badenoch to give them the nod? Imagine the insult. Thought to be less hopeless than Priti Patel or Chris Philp. You’re never going to recover from that. Just left to wander the backbenches. Now to one of the lucky ones. Robert Jenrick. No one could possibly doubt Honest Bob’s right to be in the shadow cabinet. Few have achieved as little as him in the last 10 years. A shining example to failures everywhere. Rewarded for going that extra mile in the search for existential nihilism. His only achievements that anyone can remember are to have removed a mural and to have done a favour for a one-time pornographer. Ten years in Westminster and that’s his legacy.
So you can only suppose Kemi’s real objective in appointing her team has been to gaslight the country while having a laugh. How else does Honest Bob wind up as shadow justice secretary? The one job where a smidgen of respect for law and order is required goes to a man whom you believe to have a “whiff of impropriety” and who wants to trash all international treaties and conventions. Luckily, Honest Bob isn’t given to introspection. That would require some trace of self-awareness. Jenrick has none. He has never stopped to think how a man of his limited talents could get so far. Has never had a belief that he wasn’t prepared to ditch. A chameleon who would shape-shift at will. Which is not to say that Jenrick is entirely happy with his lot. Check out his face from the announcement last Saturday of the winner of the Conservative leadership. He had had at least half an hour to absorb the news and yet he still looked completely devastated. Even now he looks shell-shocked. Reckons the very least Kemi could have given him was home secretary. But his empty narcissism compelled him to accept. Look inside Honest Bob and you will find a hollow man. So the Whiff of Impropriety found himself on the opposition frontbench for justice departmental questions on Tuesday morning. It wasn’t the brightest of debuts. His opening contribution was to ask if Labour would apologise to the victims of all those sex offenders who had been released early. The junior justice minister, Alex Davies-Jones, had to remind him that the Tories had also released prisoners early and that the reason Labour had done the same was because the jails were full. Honest Bob then boasted about the Tories record of building new prisons. No one had told him the number of prison places had only increased by 500 over the past 14 years. Davies-Jones politely suggested he do his homework before bothering her again. His final contribution was to suggest the police ought to be allowed to shoot whoever gets in their way. Look on the bright side. The justice beat is never going to be dull while he’s around. Also having a bad morning was Jeremy Hunt. This was the first day of the new parliament that the Commons select committees had been sitting and Jezza would certainly have preferred it if Richard Hughes, the chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, had not been up before the Treasury committee. Hughes’s main offering was to suggest that the department had broken the law by failing to inform them of £9bn of public spending. From now on the OBR would never take a chancellor at their word again. Trust would be caveated with verification. So the upshot was that Jezza would have found himself in court if politicians were ever held fully accountable for their actions. But, as we know, this never happens. Governments are exempt from the rule of law. Jezza could rest easy. There again, over at the business select committee, Alan Bates and two other wronged post office operators, Jill Donnison and Dewi Lewis, were also finding out the hard way that a change of government did not always lead to a change of fortunes. The default position of many government departments is to make a loud noise and to do very little. In last week’s budget, Rachel Reeves had set aside £1.8bn in compensation for the post office operators. Only none of that has reached any of them. Nor have they been told how that money is going to be divvied up. It’s almost as if the presumption among those responsible for sorting out the payments is that the post office operators are trying to get more money than they are legitimately owed. It’s almost as if they want to make it as difficult as possible for people to claim. Bates was yet again a superb advocate. No wonder he has become a minor national treasure. Maybe not up there with David Attenborough but certainly above Richard Osman. He professed himself to be mystified at the delays in processing payments and suggested officials had deliberately made the process of applying for compensation as difficult as possible. He also said he had written to Keir Starmer a month ago to voice his concerns. And again a few days ago when he had had no reply. Now you might have thought the prime minister – who as leader of the opposition had demanded immediate settlement of claims – could at least have managed some kind of response given that Bates is a hero and was due before the committee. But no, make him wait. Why bother to look good, when it’s so much easier to look bad. Instead the prime minister’s spokesperson declared that he had written to Bates that very day. What a coincidence. Mind you, everyone’s still waiting for their dosh. No one’s even got round to working out the principles of fairness on which to process claims. It is left to the Post Office to decide. And it still seems to think the post office operators are guilty of something. The Horizon scandal isn’t going away any time soon. Taking the Lead by John Crace is published by Little, Brown (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.