He is now embroiled in the disaster engulfing Afghanistan, appearing wide eyed, sweaty and dishevelled before the cameras as what is left of global Britain’s reputation is flushed down the drain. I thought things couldn't get much worse but the scenes in Kabul this week have been horrifying beyond belief. The world seems to be descending into a new dark age.
This is on the day the Tory party accounts show Lord Brownlow paid £53,000 to repay a ‘loan’ given by the party to cover the cost of Johnson's Downing Street flat refurbishment that he was secretly hoping to get Tory donors to pay for. This included £27,000 for sanding and painting the floorboards! Yesterday he defended the £20 per week cut in UC on the grounds that people should provide for themselves and not rely on others. The hypocrisy is sickening.
The worst is that we have shown the world what we really are. A people sunk so low that we are unable to distinguish between truth and lies, between fantasy and reality, between honest men and mendacious charlatans.
UK Prime ministers have invariably been serious men and women whatever their faults and political leanings. They came to office with some ideas and a few convictions. Johnson believes in everything and nothing at the same time.
As MP and mayor of London he was always reacting to the decisions of the government of the day. But now he is actually at the very pinnacle of big decision making in this country and his instincts - where he has any - are invariably the wrong ones. He is a free market conservative who believes in state intervention, a social liberal who appointed the most authoritarian Home Secretary in history and so on. He is an ideologue without an ideology, beyond self gratification and the seeking of adulation.
I seem to remember that ex prime ministers often continued to intervene after they have gone and quite often made better points having served in the role for a few years. John Major is head and shoulders above anybody in the present Tory party and you can sympathise with him now for the time he spent in the 1990s battling against the eurosceptic nutjobs like Redwood, Cash and IDS. They eventually won out and look at the absolute mess we’re in.
When Johnson goes, and let us hope it’s not too long before that happens otherwise there will be nothing left, what will he do? He is not a statesman so cannot possibly ever be an elder one. I am not sure he will even be popular, certainly not as popular as he was. The results of two years of Johnsonism has already brought us to the edge of catastrophe with the bosses of Tesco and Iceland warning of stock shortages that will impact Christmas. The Coop CEO says stocks are at the lowest he’s ever seen!
This is as we are still only halfway through implementing the new border operating model. Checks on imports, which are supposed to begin in about five weeks' time, would only add to the shortages if they were to be implemented. Look out for an announcement of another delay very shortly.
The new UKCA certification was due to come into force in January but it seems manufacturers have been told of a 12 month extenson because of a lack of certifying authorities to do the work on thousands of harmonised goods. The CE mark will continue to be valid for a bit (and probably a lot) longer.
People are going to remember all this and I am not sure his books would ever be a commercial proposition again. And will anybody be interested in his newspaper column? I’m not convinced.
I am also quite certain that plenty of people in Downing Street now are keeping diaries with an eye on publishing their own books after he has gone. We know his capacity for understanding the detail is terrible and his decision making is capricious and chaotic, always liable to change within hours and I bet there are a lot more things we would be truly shocked about if we knew.
Who would employ him on the board of a FTSE 100 company? He knows nothing that could be useful to any business and is widely regarded internationally as a joke.
So his enforced retirement will probably not be a happy one. It will not be a route to a few easy £million and he will have to face a lot of opprobrium from former colleagues, a whole army of Cummings’. I truly hope it is as miserable as it can be, he deserves it.
