Way back in time when many people, maybe most people, thought Boris Johnson was a good guy, a welcome contrast to other stuffy politicians who told it like it was, I remember reading on social media something by a woman I did not know. She was gushing about the man who wanted to be World King and got quite close when he became prime minister. “I love Boris,” she wrote. A member of the Council House elite, like me, and she adored him. Whether it was that free-roaming tousled hair, those manly good looks or his athletic physique, I cannot say but Boris certainly had something. In contrast, I saw him as a narcissistic liar, shyster and huckster, but then I am a straight male and Boris Johnson is not my type. But the apparent love seemed to be real.
I don’t watch Jeremy Vine on 5, not least because I find him profoundly uninteresting, or his daily Radio 2 show and I’m surprised he has time to broadcast anything at all since he seems to spend much of it as a fanatical cyclist trying to get bus drivers sacked, so I didn’t listen today, despite it being presented by the right wing, but highly impressive, Nick Ferrari, normally of LBC. Anyway, Ferrari took a call from a tearful David in Southport who said this:
“On the 13th November 2020 I went to my son’s funeral at 3pm – by all accounts at 5pm the PM’s wife was dancing round No 10 singing the Winner Takes It All”.
This is relevant since tomorrow Johnson will face a committee of MPs after he misled Parliament during Covid. Johnson of course denies the charge and the lickspittle Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith agrees saying, “So far, after 10 months, not a single piece of evidence has been produced to prove otherwise.” As the Mail journalist Dan Hodges retorted, ‘Not a single piece of evidence apart from the photos, the witness statements, the reports, the fines and the official Parliamentary record.” So no evidence at all, then.
You have to wonder why, if Johnson is so innocent, he was booted out of Number 10 not just by the opposition, but mainly by his own MPs. For many years, including the three he was prime minister, they were content to put up with his lies because they deemed him, not without reason, to be an electoral asset. It was Johnson, after all, who led and swung the Brexit vote in favour of leaving the EU by lying through his teeth. Then, in 2o19 as prime minister, he lied again with his ‘Get Brexit Done’ election campaign, winning a landslide victory against the wretched Jeremy Corbyn. But even the Tory party eventually tired of Johnson.
Now MPs must decide whether Johnson misled Parliament. Here’s a spoiler alert: he did. He misled to the House and spoke lie upon lie. It’s what he does, it’s who he is. But even the Boris, hero of the Council House elite, overstretched in the end, stabbed in the back by the current prime minister, Brand Rishi Sunak.
As David in Southport pointed out, shortly after his own son’s funeral at Number 10 there was an Abba party, attended by Johnson, at which his wife sang the Winner Takes It All. This is a man who set the rules, and indeed the laws, for everyone else, appearing on television almost every night, and seemingly throughout lockdown he was on the razz. And let’s not forget that Johnson’s assassin, Sunak, was also fined for partying too. Thousands of people died alone in care homes and hospital wards and many others died as a direct result of Johnson’s disastrous handling of Covid and for him to party and then lie about it should be the end for him.
“I love Boris.” Really? I can’t think of a single thing I admire about him other than showing early support for Ukraine after Putin’s Russia invaded. He’s an all round wrong ‘un who has dragged this country into the gutter, making us the laughing stock of the world. Tomorrow, a committee of MPs have the chance to see him off for good. For the sake of our country, I hope they take it.
