With weary predictability, the county’s Conservative MPs have yet again ridden to the defence of our scandal-magnet Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In the wake of the Metropolitan Police fining Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak for breaking the law, Harriett Baldwin and Nigel Huddleston both invoked the war in Ukraine as a reason for the Prime Minister and Chancellor to keep their jobs.

For any MP to suggest Britain cannot afford to change Prime Ministers now is deeply concerning. The United Kingdom is a deeply resilient country, in which the transfer of power has happened seamlessly – even in wartime – for centuries.

As the smoke cleared from the Battle of the Somme during the first World War, David Lloyd George took over from Herbert Henry Asquith. The Battle of Britain was imminent in 1940, when Neville Chamberlain was ousted in favour of Winston Churchill. As British service personnel began to prepare their desert camo gear for the first Gulf War, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was ejected by her own MPs.

Prime Ministers come and go, but Britain’s institutions remain. Generals still take orders, civil servants still advise, and cabinets still decide. Mrs Baldwin and Mr Huddleston, however, expect us to believe our country now cannot be governed without one particular man, as if the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were a small business, scared to sack the only staff member who knows how to do payroll.

This line of defence cannot be believed, and nor should it be. Further, to suggest – as Mrs Baldwin does – that the voters should decide the Prime Minister’s fate in 2024 is a dangerous lowering of standards.

In Worcestershire, as elsewhere, there is a core of people who will always want to vote for policies that were once traditionally conservative. Low taxation, for example, or a tough approach to crime.

These voters should be able to vote in a way that respects their values, without the need to give their endorsement to liars and lawbreakers. To suggest that our Prime Minister remains in post at the next election will rob them of the ability to vote with a clean conscience. This idea is beneath any true public servant.

If the Conservative party is unable to present a law-abiding candidate for Prime Minister in 2024, it will not be the voters who need to change their ways – it’ll be the Conservatives.