Cardboard cutout of Boris Johnson spotted with someone’s rubbish

Politics can be a cruel business.

One minute you’re hanging the halls of power with hand-crafted gold wallpaper, with people so keen to party with you they’ll break the law to do it.

And then the next, you’re so out of favour that even your cardboard cutouts get chucked in the bin.

We may not know exactly what led to an adult-size model of the former prime minister being callously thrown out with the rubbish, but it could be a metaphor for the removal of Boris Johnson as prime minister.

As his ministers and aides began to desert the ship in July, he was left with no option but to announce he would resign, hanging on as caretaker PM until Liz Truss finally succeeded him yesterday.

Perhaps the person who chucked out the cardboard Boris has now got a Liz Truss statue in their living room.

Trevor Gardner, 56, was out walking his dog in Swanley, Kent on Monday when he saw the fallen-from-grace Boris cutout and took a photo.

It was surrounded by bin bags and an old Amazon delivery box.

The cardboard figure looks somewhat cowed by circumstance, bent at the knees and as if he could be trying to give a thumbs up but not mustering the optimism.

Monday was the day Liz Truss was announced as the winner of the Tory leadership race, beating Rishi Sunak with 57% of the vote from party members.

‘It made me laugh as it’s very topical as he’d been on the news that morning,’ Trevor said, without much sympathy.

‘I’m not a fan of him – he acts as a schoolboy.’

Trevor said he would have liked to have seen Penny Mordaunt win the Conservative leadership race.

But he did not go as far as saying he would like a cutout of her.

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