Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo
U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson reads a statement outside 10 Downing Street formally resigning as Conservative Party leader, July 7, 2022, in London.
So Boris Johnson has gone. Or has he? Downing Street says Johnson can stay as prime minister until October. If so, it’s a ruse. He will hope that the fight to succeed him will see the Conservative Party devour itself as a rabid right-wing tax- and public-service-cutting faction battles it out with more moderate old-fashioned Tories.
Already the hats in the ring are from the hard right of the Tory Party wannabe PMs—who are more Marine Le Pen than Angela Merkel. Their average age is 71 and last time they chose a proven liar who had betrayed every friend, colleague, and woman in a long journey from Eton and the Oxford Union to 10 Downing Street.
The party’s MPs have to choose two of their number who then go forward to a ballot vote of all paid-up Tory activists. In the meantime, some wary Conservative MPs are trying to block the idea of Johnson as caretaker prime minister until the fall, because they know his tricks all too well.
As the Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, cracked in the House of Commons, “This was the first case in history of a ship leaving the drowning rat.” Starmer is not known for his wit, but Tory MPs burst out laughing in order to send their message: Johnson has to go.
As in House of Cards, the hate, backstabbing, and raw treachery of the ruling rightist in the deeply rotten English state is now revealed. Third-rate politicians who crawled to Johnson and flattered his insatiable need for praise and were rewarded with ministerial posts are now self-importantly blathering on the BBC about the need for integrity in government.
Johnson tried to argue that as he won the general election in 2019 he has a mandate from heaven and cannot be required to go. This is constitutional nonsense, as for 250 years the House of Commons has removed prime ministers, sometimes in the middle of war, who MPs judge are no longer fit for office.
In fact, it can be argued that the Labour Party gifted Johnson to the nation. By insisting that the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn be Labour’s candidate against Johnson in 2019, Labour guaranteed his win. I have canvassed for Labour for half a century and never experienced such voter fury that my party could seriously propose Corbyn as a possible prime minister.
Johnson won a big majority, but in two parliamentary by-elections last month he lost Tory seats in rural Devon and Yorkshire by big majorities. The Tories also lost control of big city councils, including the City of Westminster, a Tory bastion for 50 years.
Tories had lived with Johnson’s reckless lies over many years, his serial infidelity to the truth, colleagues, and women, but believed he had a magic touch with voters.
Now this disappeared and every Tory MP faced the prospect that their prime minister would cost them their seats and political career.
JOHNSON SIMPLY WENT TOO FAR in telling lies. Britain hid behind closed doors in the pandemic as Johnson ordered draconian quarantine measures to contain COVID. Children were banned from saying goodbye to dying parents in hospitals and care homes. The most poignant picture was of the Queen sitting all by herself beside the coffin of her husband Prince Philip.
There is nothing new that has been revealed in Johnson’s behavior and indifference to truth.
As the nation mourned with the Queen in her lonely COVID goodbye, suitcases full of wine were being rolled into Downing Street as Johnson hosted drunken parties for aides and political chums. The parties descended into No. 10 drunkenness, with aides fornicating behind sofas, vomiting in corners, and snapping at immigrant workers arriving before dawn to clean up the mess.
Photographs emerged of a jovial Johnson hosting parties while passing laws and ordinances forbidding such gatherings for the rest of Britain.
The affair was dubbed “Partygate.” An official inquiry was launched. Johnson lied to the House of Commons, saying he had not attended any of the parties, or if he did, they were “work events.” The police were unimpressed and fined the prime minister for breaches of rules he enforced on others.
His proudest claim, that he was “Mr. Brexit,” has turned to ashes in his mouth as the great project of Britain declaring a trade war on itself is now condemned by every economist, including many who previously supported cutting away from Europe. The Government Office for Budget Responsibility says U.K. GDP will call down by 4 percent as a result of Brexit.
Retail price inflation is at its highest level since the 1970s. Old people have to decide to spend meager pensions on heating or eating. Meanwhile, Johnson has asked the taxpayer to pay for a $200,000 tree house for his children in the PM’s official residence in Chequers.
When he was foreign secretary, a staffer went into his august office to find a Tory Party press officer giving Johnson a blow job on the red leather sofas where world dignitaries sit to discuss global affairs. She is now the latest Mrs. Johnson, demanding gold lamé wallpaper for the couple’s Downing Street apartment.
The final straw was when Johnson promoted as deputy chief whip an MP who had a reputation of sexually forcing himself on young men when drunk, which he frequently was. The latest incident was at the Carlton Club, the Pall Mall men-only bar and dining club of Tory politicians for 200 years. Johnson joked about this rapist and lied again when he said he did not know about his friend’s penchant for touching the genitals of young Tory aides in the Carlton Club.
THERE IS NOTHING NEW that has been revealed in Johnson’s behavior and indifference to truth. One of the Greek philosophers Johnson studied at school and university is Heraclitus.
He wrote 2,500 years ago that “Character is destiny.” Johnson was blessed with many gifts in the cradle, but the good fairy forgot to give him a character in which truth had a part.
The ministers Johnson promoted and who will compete against each other to replace him include few with a proven record of public service but many who became instantly rich working for U.S. banks or indulging in dodgy business deals of borderline legality in this century’s get-rich-quick meretricious England.
The Tory Party has no leader to unite around. Most of those who resigned in the last 48 hours were fully signed up to Project Johnson until it started losing electoral popularity.
Johnson’s demise is, however, the end of the Tories’ 30-year war against Europe. From the moment Tony Blair deprived the Conservatives of power 25 years ago, the party decided to make a nationalist populist English anti-Europeanism the major theme of their return to power. A succession of Oxford-educated Tory leaders—William Hague, David Cameron, Theresa May, and now Boris Johnson—have been consumed by the Europe question.
It was Johnson who was the chief Europhobe propagandist in articles, books, and demagogic speeches. It won the Brexit plebiscite in 2016, and then he destroyed the hapless Theresa May and walked over her body to enter No. 10.
Brexit is going badly, with most economists saying it was a mistake for Britain to declare a trade war on itself. All economic indicators are set negatively. Scotland is looking to end the United Kingdom. Ireland has lost its unionist majority, with the United States openly siding with the EU against Johnson’s dalliance with extreme Ulster rightists.
Now his incessant lies have at last caught him.
