Get ready for the utterly horrific Prime Minister Boris Johnson – Kezia Dugdale

I hope you are all prepared for another weary political process to complement the current weary Brexit process we find ourselves in – we have a Tory leadership battle to sit through.

Theresa May has said she will resign if MPs back her Brexit deal in the Commons next month, with a decision on the specific exit timetable to follow, meaning a new Prime Minister to lead our new relationship with the EU. While it is encouraging that Theresa May has seen reason and set out her departure, we could find ourselves straight out of the frying pan and into the fire.

The top name touted to replace her as Tory leader and Prime Minister is the class clown of Westminster, the blond bombshell, Boris Johnson.

As the clear favourite with the Tory party faithful, it is utterly horrific to envisage Boris Johnson as the occupant of 10 Downing Street. A man able to combine dishonesty, buffoonery and incompetence.

A man who told repeated lies to the British people during the EU referendum and who then did more damage to our international standing as Foreign Secretary. What Boris Johnson represents is a threat to sensible, fact-based, progressive politics in this county.

Even with many MPs in his party who say they reject the narrow nationalism and No Deal Brexit that he is flirting with, it may come to pass that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson becomes our next Prime Minister.

Whoever becomes the new occupant of 10 Downing Street should be legitimised by a General Election result and understand that the UK that voted in 2016 is not the same UK as today. Things have changed dramatically since then, and the Prime Minister should recognise that.

Daggy dad Scott the new Wizard of Oz

Australian politics has been, if you can imagine, even more tumultuous than the UK’s in recent years. They’ve had five different Prime Ministers since 2013, with the most recent expected to return a sixth in Bill Shorten, the Leader of the Labor Party.

Australia has had a consistently strong economy but there’s deep rooted inequality and wages have been stagnant for some time, despite the good economic times. It was fertile ground for a left-wing victory, but it was not to be.

Much to everyone’s surprise, including all the pollsters, sitting Prime Minister Scott Morrison, pictured, held on to his job after styling himself as the ‘Daggy dad’ of the nation. He felt safe and the nation put their trust in him over more radical alternatives.

One of his Liberal colleagues and former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, came to a sticky end though.

Known for electioneering in his Speedos and being the subject of Julia Gillard’s famous misogyny speech, Mr Abbott lost his constituency to former Olympian Zali Steggall, who fought the Sydney borough seat on the issue of climate change and won.

The environment seems to be the issue that killed Labor’s hopes too, losing out in its former heartland of Queensland, where it was seen to be facing both ways on the issue of a coal mine. Jobs on one hand, carbon emissions on the other. It seems that if you try and face both ways at once, voters will just pick another.