Bowing Out - Again

You hesitate to say that Boris Johnson resigning as an MP is the end of a career, because it’s happened so often, and it may well happen again. He’s like the kid in a school play, who can’t bear to leave the stage. “I’m off for now,” he smirks “but I could well be back again.”

His loyal fans, of course, are ready with their eulogies. “He got the big calls right”, they say, “on Brexit, the vaccine, and Ukraine.” So tempting, this simple little vignette, where the master flips three coins and calls it right every time. Got Brexit right, in the sense of making it happen - but not in terms of having any kind of plan what it involved. Got the vaccine right, by appointing the right person to co-ordinate it (cf Test and Trace, where he got it disastrously wrong) but everything that Kate Bingham has said since powerfully indicates that he has no grasp at all of what needs to happen to counteract further pandemics. And yes, he had hearty photo ops with Zelensky, but my guess is that they’d have been even warmer if he’d raised a finger to make London less welcoming to Russian oligarchs.

What infuriates is the total lack of logic. Boris fans moan about Sunak’s betrayal of Johnson, stabbing him in the back by resigning. So what do they think their hero’s curren stance amounts to, sabotaging any attempt of Sunak to look like a compeent Prime Minister, after years of serial incompetence? Abstract values, like loyalty or consistency, mean nothing. What matters is what he wants, today. And that’s why we’re glad to be rid of him.