So, this is finally it.
After 59 resignations from government, leaving it in absolute tatters
and unable to do it's work, after countless lies and denials, and
playing the incompetence card, by claiming he forgot, or he didn't
know, Boris Johnson is finally set to depart Number 10 Downing
Street, probably in the autumn, once the Tory Party has spent a few
months trying to find someone willing to take on the severely
poisoned chalice that is governing a UK that is falling apart after
Boris Johnson's tenure, and while Boris Johnson takes the wallpaper
down that he had put up in the flat.
And it all started when
Chris Pincher, had to resign as Deputy Chief Whip, because he had
groped 2 men in a private members club, the Carlton Club, a known
Tory watering hole. He then lost the party whip the next day,
despite the fact that hours earlier, the party claimed it would not
be removing the whip from him because he had done the right thing in
stepping down. Then Johnson's spokesman, a man who gave Comical Ali
a run for his money, told journalists that Johnson hadn't been aware
of any specific allegations against Pincher before appointing him in
February.
The Sunday papers called him
out on that lie and as Sunday became Monday, it became clearer that
the question wasn't did Boris Johnson know, it was more how much did
he know, and when did he stop knowing it?
Tuesday saw the bomb being
dropped, when Lord MacDonald, the former permanent under secretary at
the Foreign Office, and the EIEIO, published a letter revealing that
a complaint was made against Pincher, back when he was at the Foreign
Office in 2019, and that Johnson was personally informed about it.
Downing Street had to admit that Lord MacDonald's recollection of
events was correct, but that Boris had actually forgotten about it
when appointing Pincher in February.
Tory MPs, who had already
been mutineering in large numbers due to Partygate, were now in open
revolt. Letters of no-confidence began flooding in to the 1922
committee. Tuesday evening's 6 O Clock News on BBC1 had to open up
with breaking news about the resignations of Savid Javid and Rishi
Sunak. Almost a dozen other junior ministers, Parliamentary Private
Secretaries, a trade envoy, and even the Solicitor General, resigned
their posts with immediate effect. Boris Johnson was on borrowed
time at this point, it was just a case of how long he was going to
try and hang on.
The Night Of The Long
Knives, became a Night and Day of the Long Knives, as Wednesday saw
many more Tory MPs, over 30 all told, junior ministers, ministerial
aides and trade envoys all quit their government posts with immediate
effect. By 10 O'Clock that night, the Tory whip's office had
calculated that Boris could only get support from 65 Tory MPs, out of
almost 360. The maths were simply against him. Yet Boris vowed to
fight on, even sacking Michael Gove in an act that was of pure
desperation, as much as it was out of revenge. Michael Gove had told
him earlier in the day it was time to go, and a ministerial
delegation, including his new Chancellor, who he'd appointed Tuesday
Night to replace Rishi Sunak, told him his time was up. And more
letters of no confidence arrived at the 1922 committee.
More resignations came on
Thursday, bringing the total to 59. The government couldn't even
function properly. Finally, Boris came to realise what we had all
known. His time in number 10 was up. 2 years and 348 days. That
was the entirety of his time as Prime Minister. Theresa May had made
it to 3 years and 12 days. Boris Johnson had fallen short. But,
them's the breaks.
And yet, the after effects
of his time in office will be felt long after he is gone. His
departure is without any dignity, just desperation and delusion,
clinging on to power even though his own cabinet was trying to oust
him in a political coup. What brought him down was his constant
lying, trying almost to out-Trump Donald Trump during his tenure as
US President. His tenure in office could best be described as a
Shakespearian tragedy, written by monkeys on typewriters. He piled
lies, on top of lies, on top of lies, and when that failed, he pulled
out the incompetence card, claiming to have forgotten, or not known,
or not understood. He prefered being thought of as incompetent,
rather than admitting his own mistakes.
And despite all the
protestations of enough is enough and Boris had gone one step too
far, Boris Johnson was a known entity when he entered 10 Downing
Street, he was known to be a liar and the same people who were crying
out over Boris's lies, were the ones who put him there. The Tory
party elected him to replace Theresa May in the first place. Surely,
they must have known what they were letting themselves in for. If
they did, their protestations this past week ring incredibly
hypocritical. If they didn't, then they are as incompetent as Boris
is.
They sat idly by and watched
him take a flamethrower to the unwritten British constitution, to
standards in public life, to their own party, and just let it happen.
The Tory party is unfit to govern this country, or a local council,
or even a school. Trust and integrity meant nothing to them, so why
are they so up in arms about it now? Could it be that they are just
protecting their own behinds, because they are seeing the possibility
of losing their seats at the next general election, whenever that
happens to be?
Trust in politics now is the
lowest its ever been and its not hard to see why. Everything from
the “oven-ready” Brexit deal that even Boris had to admit was
unworkable, through to his painfully slow and inept response to Covid
and beyond, have eroded trust in politics as quickly as a heatwave in
the Arctic would erode the polar ice cap.
Boris Johnson won a 80 seat
majority at 2019's general election, and he basically rendered it
moot and useless, through a mixture of hubris, ambition, lies and
incompetence. The damage that Brexit has done will take many many
years to undo, and that will only begin to happen when someone
decides to undo it, something Sir Keir Starmer this past week
indicated he wasn't going to do. Scotland is in all likelihood going
to break away from the UK, and who knows when Wales will follow suit
and leave because it'll be easier to take your own chances than trust
in Westminster and a system of governence that has been forever
broken by Boris Johnson. And then there's Cornwall and Yorkshire and
other areas outside of London and the Home Counties, who have
seriously gotta consider whether it's worth staying in a broken
system that cannot be repaired or take your chances on the world
stage on your own.
Nothing about life after
Boris Johnson's premiership looks good. Even the opposition
themselves don't look that good. They talked about ousting Boris
Johnson as Caretaker PM through a vote of no-confidence in the House.
I mean, talk about opening the stable door, after the horse has
already bolted and jumped it.
There has been more chaos in
Westminster over the last 6 years, than we've seen in all the
previous administrations since WW2 ended, and frankly, the country is
sick of it. Politics is thought of as boring, but the last 6 years
have been anything but boring. We could do with at least a few years
boring old politics as usual, so the country can recover from 6 years
of chaos that was started by a prime minister who couldn't face what
he had done, so he left. 6 years later, the mess is still there,
it's getting worse, and nobody seems ready to face the prospect of
cleaning it up.