Friday 4 February 2022

Johnson's aides desert him en masse

Yesterday was a mixture of farce and disaster in Downing Street. Four of his most senior staff resigned on the same day while he was on a visit to Blackpool and last night his 'shadow whips' (a description that includes Nigel Adams, the most deluded of his stooges) were briefing that this was part of the 'clear out' Johnson had promised his MPs on Monday. This was after Johnson himself has been telling everyone else to wait for the Metropolitan Police to report. Nobody seems to believe any of it was actually planned by the PM - although with him it can often be hard to tell.


That was the farce. The disaster was losing Munira Mirza his long-time policy adviser, Martin Reynolds, principal private secretary, Dan Rosenfield, chief of staff and Jack Doyle, director of communications - and on the same day! It was like watching a human fragmentation grenade.

Cummings tweeted half way through that the bunker was collapsing and I think it is:

Someone suggested it was like Harold MacMillan's night of the long knives - but in reverse. 

It must be clear to Johnson his time is up. People he wanted to bring in like Antonia Romeo and Lynton Crosby turned him down even before yesterday's events which must make Downing Street an even less enticing prospect than it was the day before.

Nobody of any worth or with any self respect will take on the jobs vacated, working for a man who quite obviously has serious character flaws if not genuine mental issues. He is as he always has been, totally out of control.

Cummings himself advised any potential applicants that the incoming prime minister is going to bring in his own team and the new job - for which you may have given up a good one - will have lasted just a few short weeks or even days at this rate.

I noted Gavin (Lord) Barwell on the Today programme saying that privately cabinet ministers are deeply concerned at how Downing Street is descending into chaos. Up to now they have all defended the PM publicly but Rishi Sunak has opened up a very small division by suggesting he himself wouldn't have used the words Johnson did about Kier Starmer, although his chief secretary Simon Clarke, who comes over as somewhat robotic, thought Johnson's smear was perfectly OK.

All of this would have been bad enough, but it isn't just the bunker which is collapsing, the entire economy is entering a very turbulent period. Yesterday, below the smokescreen of the chaotic events in No 10 we had:

  • OFGEM announcing a 53% increase in the energy price cap from April
  • The BoE announcing inflation will reach 7.25% very shortly
  • Real wages will FALL by 2% this year
  • GDP growth forecast for this year was lowered
  • Interest rates went up again to 0.5%
Shell announced profits of $19 billion for 2021 - a quadrupling - largely due to rising gas prices and a plan to buy back $8.5 billion shares. Calls for a windfall tax (as France have done on EDF) were ignored in favour of a £200 loan for struggling consumers advanced in October and paid back over the next five years. It looks like a fig leaf to give ministers something to say on camera and to constituents who are going to be as mad as hell.

French consumers will see a 4% increase this year.

And this is not even to mention the developing crisis in Ukraine. The Americans must be tearing their hair out at the events in Downing Street.  Global Britain is embroiled in a row over parties with Johnson at the epicentre and making a bad situation worse by gratuitously smearing political opponents.

This is just when the British prime minister should be engaged on the world stage, although perhaps many will think it a blessing in disguise. Anything Johnson touches automatically degenerates into tragedy or farce.


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