Could we get that lucky?

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It’s long struck me as being a curious aspect of the world of football that a manager who leads one team to trophy after trophy turns out to be an utter failure when he transfers to another team, and that a manager who has a hopeless record with one team goes on to have a huge run of success with another. It’s almost as if what matters is whether the team is functioning well or not rather than the attributes of the manager. If the team is dysfunctional, it doesn’t matter how good the manager is, the team will continue to fail.

None of that only applies in football, of course; and that latter point about appointing a new manager not making any difference to an utterly dysfunctional team is one which the English Conservative and Unionist Party has already tested to destruction. Although that hasn’t deterred them from seizing the current contest as an opportunity to add further proof to the theorem.

There is another strange parallel between the two worlds as well. No matter how badly a manager does with one team before being sacked, there will always be some fans who believe either that he should be brought back to try again, or else that, despite all the evidence, he is the obvious candidate for any management job which comes along. And that brings us to Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Having wrecked what rather likes to call itself “the world’s most successful party”, he is still being suggested and promoted for other jobs, where he would be free to wreck other organisations. Last week, we were told that he was being lined up to wreck the Daily Telegraph. Don’t get me wrong here – wrecking the Torygraph would be almost as big a favour to the UK as wrecking the Tory Party – it’s just that I somehow doubt that that is quite what his backers have in mind. Although, given his demonstrated propensity to swing between giving Johnson his total support and then pulling the rug from under him, perhaps Zahawi is really planning to sack him a day or two after taking control.

Ten months ago, it was reported that Johnson was going to become a presenter on GB News, although he has yet to make his debut performance. I don’t know whether he’s been paid for that ten months, but it’s at least possible that GB News would prefer to pay him for not turning up and wrecking their channel. It would almost be a sign of intelligence amongst channel bosses. And taking the money without doing very much for it isn’t exactly new. Johnson was, apparently, paid an advance of £88,000 for a book on Shakespeare for publication in 2016. The publishers are still waiting. Fortunately, he’s found a different publisher for his memoirs, who have apparently stumped up £510,000 for the privilege of publishing the tome, if it’s ever finished. That last may turn out to be another triumph of hope over experience.

Throughout it all, his long-term fans and sycophants still hold on to dreams about him returning to once again take the reins of a party in crisis, forgetting his role in creating that existential crisis in the first place. Perhaps their dreams will come true in the next or next but one leadership election (they can surely fit at least two more in before the next election) – but could we really get that lucky?