I have absolutely no idea why Boris Johnson got involved in politics

Compare the prime minister with Harriet Harman, who announced this week that she would not stand again after 40 years of public service

What a week! It will be news to absolutely no one that the prime minister is a lying charlatan. This is a man who has been sacked from numerous jobs for lying; has frequently put his own selfish urges over solemn vows he made to the women in his life; and, as recently as last month, tried to rewrite parliamentary rules in order to protect his pals who had been found to be making a load of cash lobbying for big business.

It is absolutely not news to anyone that Boris Johnson cannot be trusted. He and the people around him think they can live beyond the rules and vows that other people live by. And so they drank wine and ate cheesy nibbles, while the rest of us were making painful sacrifices.

So versed in lying is Boris Johnson that he thought absolutely nothing of the strategy of maintaining, still to this very day, that he knew nothing about the numerous illegal parties going on under his roof. Even after a video of his closest aides having a good old giggle at the grieving public’s expense emerges, even after one of those aides gives a tearful resignation about these very events, Boris Johnson still has the gall to claim that said events did not occur and that he is as shocked as the rest of us.

He is either a liar or an idiot. Frankly, it seems pretty likely that he is both. He must think it very odd that the staff he paid handsomely out of my pocket and yours would do a whole skit about a party that didn’t happen and then resign over an event that didn’t happen. He then accused anoyone who dared to ask about his indescretions of “playing politics”. You see, he thinks people caring about his bad behaviour is the problem. Pull the other one, bab.

Boris Johnson is relying on the fact that people know he is a liar. He is hoping that he can weather the storm by convincing the public that politicians are all the same and trying to take the rest of us down with him. This has been his playbook for the entire time he has been the prime minister. I’m afraid to say that sometimes it works.

We shouldn’t believe it. Yes, all politicians make mistakes, but the vast majority make mistakes or do stupid things along the way to having an actual underlying purpose that is beyond their own sense of entitlement, power and greed. Most have a driving purpose that isn’t their own self-gratification and desire to have jolly japes. Boris Johnson in this regard sits in a category of one. I have absolutely no idea why Boris Johnson got involved in politics. I have no idea what purpose drives him. Who knows what he cares about beyond being the most popular boy. He just genuinely thinks he is better than you, that the rules don’t apply to him.

If there was ever a week when we needed reminding that politics is meant to be an act of public service driven by the desire to change the world, it was this one. It is with some sadness to me that this example came in the shape of Harriet Harman. This week, the longest-serving woman ever to have sat in the House of Commons, the mother of the house, made the announcement that she would be stepping down from parliament.

Forty years – my whole life, in fact – Harriet Harman has ploughed her furrow in Westminster and beyond. No one could ever say that they didn’t know why Harriet Harman was involved in politics; she has been pretty clear for four decades that she was there to change the lives of people who had less and to make the world a better place for women and girls.

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When I heard that she would not be standing in the next general election I sent her the following message: “I’m glad that you will finally get a break. I’m bereft for every woman who will arrive in parliament without you there, but most of all I am grateful from the bottom of my heart for the life my children now live because you defended women like me, juggling two jobs, caring for kids and dying parents. You built me a ladder to climb inside and outside parliament. No one will ever compare.”

Harriet Harman spent every day of the past 40 years laser-focused on trying to make it easier for people in our country to achieve their dreams. She invented free childcare; with others, she made sure tax credits were paid to mothers like me to make sure we could afford to work and have kids; she ran a low pay commission to make the minimum wage actually pay out, so families could live.

Harriet Harman didn’t need a slogan; she understood levelling up. She didn’t know me but she changed my life. Boris Johnson is not fit to lick the boots of Harriet Harman. His government has made poorer every family that Harriet Harman levelled up.

Politicians are not all the same, some are class where others are crass. Harriet Harman knows how to play politics; Boris Johnson knows how to play party games. I know who I would prefer to leave parliament.

Jess Phillips is the shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding and Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley