To call the man delusional would be doing him a favor. Boris Johnson is not mad. It’s much worse than that. He realized that pretending to be crazy was all he had left. At this point in the narrative, Captain Blackadder stuck two pencils into his nostrils and announced “wiggle”. Within 20 minutes he was dead.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, he came out fighting in a style that most closely resembled some crazy modern dance. The usual chorus of chattering, finger-pointing, spinning and bobbing doesn’t fly without the warm-up singers. The silence behind him was the killer.
Keir Starmer gave it his all, but he’s hit this particular cow’s ass with a banjo many, many times before. He knows he won’t be the one to end this sad show.
The most brutal body blow came from a backbencher in 2019 called Gary Sambrook. It felt as if he violated some sacred omerta by revealing what Johnson had personally told him and others in the members’ tea room. That Johnson tried to blame what Chris Pincher did on the “seven other MPs” who were there who failed to stop him from getting drunk and committing his latest horrific act.
For Mr. Sambrook, this got to the heart of the matter. Always blaming others, not taking responsibility. To deflect. And that is why he must resign now.
Labor and the SNP applauded. It was an obscure maneuver, not least when Johnson responded by pointing the finger again and going on about “the real reason they want me to leave.” And that’s the point. Of course they want him gone. They are the opposition, but they are not the problem. The problem is that his own country, very clearly now, also wants him gone.
The quotes piled up, although no one put it better than Virginia Crosby, who has now resigned from her high-profile role as third-in-command in Wales. She told Johnson that all his accomplishments in office, which are not small, “continue to be overshadowed by the simple calculation that I believe the country has made — that you cannot be trusted to tell the truth.”
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And that is the inevitable heart of the matter. Sajid Javid got up at the end of PMQs to say much the same thing, albeit less succinctly. Johnson stared off into the middle distance as he was told, “There are only so many times you can hit the reset button. There are only so many times you can turn this machine on and off before you realize something is fundamentally wrong.
Johnson fled at last in a desperate hurry. People will obsess over the little things, but this is not some big constitutional issue. His party has obviously had enough of him and this will end the matter in a very short period of time, whatever their rules are at the moment.
The end point has already passed. He leaves behind a Brexit that isn’t really over, he just lied about it, and one country – and one country – are deeply damaged by being allowed to be touched by it, as everything that approached always, always is .
He knows it’s over. It’s just a matter of when he’ll find the courage to stop pretending.
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