No matter who the captain is, the good ship ‘Great Britain’ is going to be rudderless - Sir Andrew Cook

How has this happened? Like Conrad’s McWhirr in his novel ‘Typhoon’, Captain Sunak has held the course… sometimes. But where he should have held steady, he’s veered away: away from the Tubig Toophail bank, which more robust souls have long considered a shifting sand-heap, fit only to be dredged up and dispersed: away from the Rock of Hard Choices, long believed to be so brittle, it needs only contact with the steel hull of a ship to shatter and collapse.

But no, fearful of these largely imagined hazards to navigation – shifting sands and soft rocks – and ignoring the dereliction of the crew who, instead of keeping a proper lookout, amuse themselves by placing bets on the ship’s daily distance run, the good Captain has altered course when he shouldn’t. Worse, when passing close to the pestilential island of Kho Vido, he stopped his ship, locked passengers and crew in their quarters and lingered at anchor. ‘The ship’s hospital will be overwhelmed otherwise’ cried the doctor – a career failure from the dregs of the medical profession, hired at the last minute. So the ship sat still in the water until all the stores were consumed, the passengers and crew became accustomed to enforced idleness, and the hospital stayed half-empty.

But lurking behind the captain is the reserve captain. ‘What of him?’ the passengers ask. ‘Is he any good? Where did he come from?’

‘I ‘eard he once worked for the Judge Advocate,’ pipes up the Master-at-Arms, a Yorkshireman. ‘If there was ever a decision to be made, they say ‘e always took the easy option. A faceless man, a man of straw. An’ beware. There’s talk ‘ee’s been mixed up with mutinies all ‘is life.’

Mutinies? The ship’s been cursed by mutinies for years. ‘First we ‘ad that stable cap’n,’ continues the Master-at-Arms in his Yorkshire accent. ‘Cap’n Cameron, but ‘e weren’t strong enough. Troublemakers in’t crew were always at ‘im. ‘E let ‘em choose the course. ‘To Europe or the World?’ he asked ‘em. Passengers too. ‘E wanted Europe, but they voted for ‘t World. So he quit, and that was when the trouble really started. Cap’n followed cap’n, two women among ‘em. They didn’t know what to do. Then a charlatan got the job. He just wanted to be cap’n. Knew nowt about ships. Ended up with this Sunak bloke. But t’other boke, Starmer, ‘ees no better. Used to flirt with the commies. Also knows nowt about ships. ‘E’ll ‘av officers thrown overboard if he ‘as ‘is way.’

‘Can’t we radio for a tug?’ cry the increasingly desperate passengers. ‘Can’t afford one,’ says the Purser, another Yorkshireman. ‘There’s no money left in’t ship’s safe.’

‘What then are those boats hovering on the horizon?’ ‘Salvage vessels,’ replies the Purser. ‘One’s a Russian, t’other’s Chinese, t’other’s Arab. Rest are pirates. Don’t care ‘bout people. Only after plunder. Don’t pin your ‘opes on ‘em.”

As panic sets in among the hapless souls aboard the doomed ship, I reflect on Gallic artist’s Théodore Géricault’s allegorical masterpiece ‘The Raft of the ‘Medusa’.

It’s all there. A ship aground off the African coast through negligence and lack of leadership. Captain and officers vacillate indecisively. Crew and passengers argue and differ. Finally, all embark on a huge raft, constructed from the sinking ship’s spars. But the raft is under-provisioned: there is insufficient water and food. The shore is easily reachable, but what to do then? This is the land of jungle and cannibals. Hither and thither the raft drifts. One by one its occupants die. Eventually, when rescue finally arrives, it is too late. All could have survived had there been resolute leadership and determination. But there wasn’t, and as a consequence all perished.

Will the Conservative party go the same way? That is more than possible. And what of Labour? Will this ‘church’ so broad it extends to both horizons, remain intact? Most unlikely. And the interlopers, the ‘third forces’? Watch them split and dissolve. National Socialist or Radical Socialist? Menshevik or Bolshevik? Which is it to be? History is inconclusive, save for one certainty.

Faced with such powerfully magnetic political polarities, the centre seldom holds. Meanwhile, the SS ‘Great Britain’ sinks ever further into the shifting sands, until finally disappearing beneath the waves, to become a mere and fading memory of its former greatness.

Sir Andrew Cook is a British industrialist.