If there is a man on these islands less genetically suited to be prime minister than Boris Johnson I would like to meet him - preferably sedated and through the bars of a secure institution. He does not have a single quality that would enable him to fulfill the role at any level. He is a deeply amoral sociopath. Despite coming under enormous pressure from all sides, he is refusing to make any apology for his absolutely shocking performance on Wednesday night.
Even The Yorkshire Post, a Brexit supporting newspaper, in its leader column is this morning calling for him to apologise.
Johnson is fragmenting his support and unifying opponents in a strategy that looks like political suicide. It is not so much high risk as completely insane. He is going to crash and burn very soon and all we can do is pray he does not take us all with him. For the 'genius' behind it all, Dominic Cummings, everything is going smoothly to plan and exactly as predicted. He has even said he's 'enjoying' it and thinks MPs shouldn't be surprised at the anger directed at them - presumably up to and beyond death threats.
We are being led by a sociopath controlled by a psychopath. It is a combination we should all dread. It cannot end well.
Johnson and Cummings wanted to prepare the ground for an early election by framing themselves as the champions of democracy and the common man against a remain obsessed elite who were blocking Brexit. It may have even worked but they cannot seem to come to terms with the new reality. He is running a minority government, made even more minor by his own ineptitude.
Steve Richards, writing in The New Statesman, says Johnson hasn't learned from his predecessors and is still behaving as if he has won a landslide majority. As Richards points out, the PM has actually tightened his own strait jacket and has no wriggle room left at all. To get a deal - any deal - through parliament as it is presently configured, he needs to persuade as many opposition MPs as possible to lend their support.
On Wednesday any potential cross-party support disappeared and even his supporters on his own side were aghast. Women MPs and no doubt many women leave voters would have been appalled by his comments.
In the ByLine Times, Otto English marked Wednesday night as the moment the mask slipped and revealed the true face of Johnson's violent populism.
Over in Brussels, Michel Barnier gave a sombre briefing to EU ambassadors. He told them no 'workable' proposals had been provided by the UK for a replacement to the backstop. Our side is still talking about different rules applying either side of the border and, according to Barnier, we want the EU to 'unravel' some of its own rules. This is despite one of the explicit aims set out in the Joint Report agreed in December 2017 being "preserving the integrity of its internal market and Northern Ireland's place within it" (paragraph 45).
Most worryingly and probably accurately, the BBC's Brussels man, Adam Fleming says:
"Separately, European diplomats believe the chances of finalising a
revised Brexit agreement by the next summit of EU leaders on 17 October
are dwindling. They think Wednesday's fractious scenes in the
House of Commons suggest the prime minister has alienated Labour MPs who
might have supported a deal.
"Some EU officials are preparing for the political turbulence in the UK to continue for several years.
"It's a pessimistic backdrop for the Brexit secretary's visit later."
Fleiming went further on Radio 4 this morning saying this political turbulence would go on "for years and years". I fear this is sadly true and things are going to get much worse before they get better. The Times report that:
"A senior cabinet minister told The Times that the country risked a “violent, popular uprising” if a second referendum overturned the result of the first one."
The problem is you cannot prove to leavers how bad it will be without going through it with disastrous results, irreversible for years, that would cause lasting, maybe permanent damage to our economy and society. Expert predictions are 'scaremongering'. Forecasts are always 'wrong'.
This is Johnson's problem. Brexit has been oversold. None of the benefits will ever be seen but until this becomes an incontrovertible truth a significant minority, over 40% will not accept the opinion of most experts. And we know from people's experience of living under the Soviet regime, there will always be some who will never admit it was a massive political error regardless of the suffering and the needless hardship.
Whatever Johnson's fate in the coming weeks and months he will always maintain Brexit was the right thing to do, but wrongly executed by those who came after him. If only they had done this or that it would all have turned out so differently. Like Blair and Cameron before him, to accept the enormity of what they have done would destroy them, so they block it out with denials of the truth.
The Tory party will be the same. The 99,000 members who inflicted Johnson upon us will claim he was thwarted by an establishment that never believed in Brexit.
But by then the Tory party will be an irrelevance.
