Poor Premier Doug Ford.

“There is no one in this country that is scrutinized more than I am,” he said after his latest misstep, the debacle around the aborted purchase of a (used) private jet for him to fly around on the people’s business.

Barely 48 hours later, despite noting his cabinet had unanimously endorsed the purchase of the nearly $30-million “Gravy Plane,” the premier did a 180-degree turn.

Ford is a seasoned and smart politician, who has already tried to spin his about-face on the Challenger jet into a case of “I’m not too shy to change my mind.”

Once again he was embracing his wannabe Everyman persona. And for the millionaire businessman, an entrepreneur since his youth, that schtick is just a co-opted persona.

“For the People” was the slogan he campaigned on eight years ago when he was first elected premier. And he has shown time and time again that, really, he is “For the People” — though maybe just not the common people who have to live with his actions and decisions.

In his 2022 campaign, he promised to “Get it Done” and then, in 2025, he swore he needed a new mandate to be able to “Protect Ontario” in the era of Donald Trump 2.0.

Instead, we have a leader in Ontario who often acts like King Trump, despite being an outspoken critic of the golden fleecer to the south of us.

The list of missteps and self-inflicted messes by Ford continues to grow.

Besides the plane, in the past week alone he has taken the hideous step of slamming shut the door on access to information related to himself, his cabinet, staff and other top government officials. And, remarkably, he made it retroactive.

The move will effectively kill pending requests for records, including those related to the premier’s personal cellphone, which he regularly uses for government business. And it shields many senior officials from public accountability.

Without access to such information and government records, it is unlikely anyone would ever have heard about the infamous Greenbelt scandal.

That charade cost a cabinet minister and several staffers their jobs over preferential treatment accorded to developers as part of a secret plan to open up parts of the protected area known as the Greenbelt.

Ford emerged largely unscathed politically and eventually promised to reverse course on the Greenbelt — though the whole affair could still cost taxpayers millions in reparations.

The premier seems not to have learned from that scandal and last week his government rammed through Bill 97 to kill access to important government information. There were no public hearings or debates on this vital piece of legislation that’s designed, ironically, to curb what the public knows about its government’s activities.

We strongly doubt Bill 97 will withstand a court challenge — and, if our wee paper had the resources, we’d gladly be part of such a fight — but in the meantime Ford has effectively granted himself and his mandarins free reign while running roughshod over the public’s right to know about how his government is being operated.

“Just trust us, folks,” is not the answer.

Couple last week’s plane and freedom of information scandals with the litany of other recent Ford government foibles — a ballooning deficit, missed housing targets (despite bulldozing over municipal controls on development), increased health care wait times and threats of more privatization, and shutting down the legislature for months, to name a few — and we all should be worried about the direction in which the premier is driving us.

The Ford regime initially vowed to be “For the People” and later to “Get it Done,” but now, like many aging governments, it appears to have lost its way.

We urge Doug Ford to take a step back, remember why he was first elected — and whose interests he was chosen to serve. It’s not too late to repair the trust that has been damaged.