It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment Boris Johnson knew his time was up. After all, he’d already outstayed his welcome by hours. If not days. If not weeks. If not months. If not years. But hearing that Chris Philp had resigned as digital minister must have come as a killer punch.
Ministers don’t come more stupid or more loyal than Philp. There is literally nothing he won’t do or say to get noticed. To be loved. His neediness is matched only by his limitless appetite for humiliation. Without Philp, the Convict was down to the real dregs. Peter Bone and Michael Fabricant. Even he could see that wasn’t going to fly.
After that, things unravelled quickly. More resignations. Michelle Donelan had come and gone as education secretary inside 36 hours. A record. She’s destined to end up as a question on Pointless. Liz Truss had booked herself on the first flight out of Indonesia so she could do her bit by tweeting. For the good of the country, you understand. Not to start on an early leadership campaign.
Suella Braverman combined taking attorney general questions in the Commons with her own leadership bid. Nadhim Zahawi couldn’t make up his mind if he was meant to be preparing his own leadership campaign or working on his joint speech with the Rwanda Panda on the economy. It was politics on acid. A Peppa Pig world where all the usual norms are thrown off centre.
But someone, somehow, managed to briefly talk Johnson down. A momentary break in his narcissism to get him to focus on the mechanics of his departure. Even as he was busy appointing some new ministers on the condition that neither they nor he would do anything. A sort of first version of his resignation honours list, presumably. You dread to think who may appear on the second one. Welcome, Lord Dacre. Hello, Dame Lulu Lytle. There will be a race to save the wallpaper. The bits of it that haven’t already peeled off the No 10 walls. Saved for the nation. A remembrance of times past.
Long before midday, Downing Street was a media scrum with everyone jostling for the best view. If this really was the end for Johnson, people wanted the best possible seat. This was a collector’s item. The Convict had dodged a bullet so many times before, no one could be certain the greased piglet wasn’t going to wriggle free again.
At one end of the street stood a few dozen No 10 staffers, along with Joy Morrissey, Johnson’s most loyal parliamentary private secretary. She looked lost in a private grief. A true believer to the last. Loyal to the death cult. An Anthem to Futility. On the other side of the building there was another small huddle. A sad group of the half-dozen or so Tory MPs who could be bothered to pay their respects. Andrea Jenkyns even shed a tear and appealed to the crowd for dignity. No one had ever cared that much about Johnson. It was almost touching. Almost.
At about 12.20pm, out came the Praetorian guard of Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nadine Dorries and Carrie Johnson, with baby Romy in a papoose. Carrie looked surprisingly chipper. As if she was relaxed about the whole thing. Maybe she is. Maybe she too has had enough of it all. It must be exhausting having to remember what lies you are supposed to forget. Or maybe she was just pleased that Johnson had won a stay of execution and she was going to be able to use Chequers for her long-delayed wedding party at the end of the month.
There was a round of applause from the devoted and the damned as Johnson walked out the front door to the lectern. His opening words were drowned out by the serial protester Steve Bray singing “bye bye Boris”, but it wasn’t hard to get the gist. The Convict wasn’t going to go down with any fake displays of piety. He was going to remain true to his narcissistic self. This was his show, and his essential message to the country was: “Fuck the lot of you. I’m the best you’re ever going to get.” An unusual approach, but very on brand.
Previous prime ministers have departed with displays of emotion. David Cameron and Theresa May had been in tears. Choked that their ambitions had not survived contact with reality. Johnson was peculiarly disengaged. Almost as if he was unbothered and was just enjoying the cameras. Any attention and all that. He was as careless with the office of prime minister as he was with everything else.
Or, more likely, he was in denial and had not yet processed that this was the end and was gaming some way that he might hang on. Maybe there would be a war. Maybe the Tories would do something so spectacularly stupid, like electing Braverman as leader, that they would beg him to come back. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. It was telling that in a resignation speech he did not use the word “resign” once.
The Convict began by listing his greatest triumphs. The Brexit deal that wasn’t oven-ready. Flying to Kyiv twice. Not building 40 hospitals. Not levelling up. Coming out of the pandemic at about the same time as everyone else. Having the second lowest growth in the G20. He was a serial winner and the Tories had been lucky to have him. He had been the best prime minister the Conservatives had ever had. And they had just tossed him to one side ungratefully. The herd mentality of a braindead mob. He knows how to make friends.
There was not a single mention that he might have been the author of his own demise. That telling lies for a living eventually catches you out. That breaking the laws you expect others to keep is never going to end well. That covering up sexual abuse scandals in the party and blaming groping on the alcohol and the victim was a very 1990s look. No, it was just that the Tories had lost their nerve and had been ambushed by the media. Yup. The Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph have always been his sternest critics.
“Them’s the breaks,” he shrugged. Grudgingly. And yes, he’d do his best to support the next idiot the Tories chose. Though his best might not actually be very much. Why would he bother to go out of his way for someone else? Especially someone for whom he had no respect. Which was everyone really.
Johnson tugged the Toddler Haircut and scratched his arse one last time. Determined not to let anyone see that he cared. That his fragile ego had been shattered. He would survive, he told himself. Books and columns to write. Proper money. And he was sure he would find a way for Lord Brownlow to still stump up for a £150,000 treehouse. Even if he didn’t have a garden to build it in.
He sloped back into Downing Street. Dilyn the dog wisely gave him a wide berth. Maybe it was time for him also to be rehoused. Out on Whitehall, Bray was playing the Benny Hill theme tune. La commedia è finita.
