No.232 – ‘Operation Save Boris’ Fails to Stop a Long, Slow Political Death.

Dear James,

On 17th April last year a solemn and dignified monarch sat alone in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, mourning the death of her late husband. Socially distanced from her family, her head was bowed and her demeanour humble. Not a sound broke the silence. She was the antithesis of hubris and her profound seriousness has become the enduring symbol of the nation’s current tragedy. Even republicans will respect her quiet dignity.

Yet almost simultaneously, two parties were in full swing in No.10 Downing Street. A suitcase of wine had been picked up in a local Coop, an impromptu disco was set up and dancing went on late into the early hours. Boris’s leaderless band of brothers and sisters was in full party mode. As more and more of such examples have come to light, the nation has reacted with shock and horror. The contrast of a solemn and responsible leader of our nation and the wayward hubris of a band of ideologues is engraved upon the nation’s psyche. The latest opinion polls are the howl of a nation’s distress.

On Thursday night, Boris’s pals pulled up the drawbridge and initiated ‘Operation Save Boris’. The appalling Jacob Rees-Mogg used his high-caste disdain for the lowly, contemptuously describing the leader of the Scottish Conservative Party as a ‘lightweight politician’. This politician, Douglas Ross MSP, had had the audacity the day before to call for the resignation of Boris Johnson. The next day in parliament the very same Rees-Mogg suggested to the speaker that the rules of lockdown may have been too strict when Boris attended the Party at No.10 on May 20th. Again, the nation groaned.

This theatre of the absurd continued throughout Friday with a highly choreographed chorus of defenders coming out to shield the beleaguered PM. Apologist after apologist gave their own versions of Boris’s nightmare.  ‘They’d all been working so hard that they needed to relax and enjoy themselves’. Meanwhile the man himself has gone into hiding claiming that ‘a member of his family had tested positive for Covid’. Where is he? Is that bunker under Downing Street still available for our current ‘Churchill’? More likely he’s being told by advisers what he needs to do to retain the slightest shred of credibility remaining to him.  But you can’t change a leopard’s spots. Boris is Boris. Always has been, always will be.

Yesterday Jennifer Guffrie, she of Prince Andrew’s denied acquaintance, tweeted that her civil case against the Prince for abusing her seventeen year old self, must be heard so that ‘the rich and powerful are not above the law.’ This week, the same message is coming out loud and clear from Downing Street. Boris Johnson, has allowed a culture of privilege to flourish ‘above the law’ in No 10. Each day we heard of more parties held on a regular basis when the rest of our nation was in severe and painful lockdown. It was confirmation that ‘There’s one rule for them, and another for the rest of us.’

Culture is a system of unconscious group behaviours and values built-into a group from its creation. The current cabinet was formed by Boris on the basis of loyalty to him. Competence was hardly a factor. Its values are largely those of the PM personally. Triumphalism has pervaded everything even in the face of the pandemic. ‘The good time boy’ translated directly into ‘The good time No.10’. The culture had become celebratory, exceptional and wholly hubristic. It became the norm, legitimised by the social and political events of ‘Getting Brexit Done’ and the 2019 election. It was largely Boris’s work. His own DNA is writ large in the group’s DNA.

Boris’s ‘charm’ won the 2019 election by creating and holding together a fragile and unlikely coalition of factions. It ‘spot-welded’ Neo-Thatcherites, arch-Brexiteers, ‘Red Wall MPs’ and traditional ‘Shire Tories’ into fragile alliance. That weld is now breaking as we see that the ‘charm’ was only the skin of a deeper Boris culture, now fully exposed as contrary to the basic values of the British public. ‘The Last Days of Boris’ is playing out in agonising detail but the message is quite clear. Boris is accountable for the current mess and there is no way that he can change. He was never fit to be PM. And he never will be.

If Boris Johnson has become a liability to your party James, for our nation as a whole, he has been an unmitigated disaster. I borrow from Leo Amery in 1940. ''Boris, you have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go!''

BH – Your Concerned Constituent.