As Westminster goes, yesterday was an even more extraordinary day than usual. It began with a letter from a former Whitehall Mandarin, Lord MacDonald, effectively calling the PM a liar when he claimed not to have known about the activities of Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip until a few days ago who allegedly groped - sexually assaulted - two men in a London hotel while drunk. It ended with Sunak, Javid and about ten junior members of the government quitting. Quite a day.
Two more resignations have come this morning. Will Quince, who defended Johnson on TV recently, and Laura Trott have both gone before 8 o'clock. How many more will follow we don't know.
Johnson is finished. Of that there is no doubt. He will be out in days, a few weeks at most. The long running farce which is Johnson's premiership is drawing to an early close as it was always bound to.
But his real comeuppance - the days of reckoning with the British people - will be delivered over the next ten years or more as the disastrous legacy of his brief premiership becomes clear.
His skill, if he had one, was in getting Brexit - the biggest foreign policy error since Suez - 'done' which is not dissimilar to convincing passengers on The Titanic that colliding with an iceberg in the middle of the north Atlantic was actually a desirable and even beneficial thing to do. And fair do's it takes some unique ability. I couldn't even attempt it and I daresay you couldn't either. No, you need to be both an idiot and a liar of rare quality to do such a thing.
Step forward Boris Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson, the ideal front man for the campaign.
To understand what is coming for the PM once he's kicked out of Downing Street, read this tweet from his once trusted aide Dominic Cummings:
when covid inquiry comes, it will be many of these deep state bombs dropping on 🛒 day in day out https://t.co/ZlaQcoO5k9
— Dominic Cummings (@Dominic2306) July 5, 2022
Cummings thinks the Lord MacDonald letter is a foretaste of what is on the way. A lot of senior civil servants and professionals will be giving evidence to the Covid inquiry and it will blow apart the notion put about by the right-wing press that Johnson (of all people) did anything positive during the pandemic.
The blame for thousands and thousands of needless deaths will be on his shoulders.
Next, the economy is in deep trouble. The pound fell again yesterday and is trading well below $1.20 - it went as low as $1.1919 overnight and although it recovered a bit, it is struggling at about $19.64 at the moment. The new chancellor Nadhim Zahawi is going to find himself in the hot seat as a full blown economic crisis engulfs us.
I posted a link to a piece by Jeremy Warner in The Telegraph on Monday where he warns that: We are on track for a currency crisis – and bankruptcy.
I think he's bang on - and Brexit is to blame. Zahawi is said to have threatened to resign if he didn't get the Treasury job when it seemed Liz Truss was being lined up for it. He apparently sees things Johnson's way and will cut taxes. What this will do to international investors who are propping us up and have been for years, nobody knows, but if they lose confidence in the government's ability to manage the economy sterling will come under renewed pressure.
That in turn will mean yet higher import prices and even more inflation.
The trade unions, especially the public sector ones, are starting to flex their muscles and you can expect a lot more of this as the government resists big pay increases and the unions, after years of austerity and falling incomes, will fight tooth and nail to get what they see as justified rises for their members.
Next, NHS waiting lists are rising to record levels and covid admissions are also up (I believe). This situation is not likely to be resolved quickly at the best of times and in the middle of a financial crisis it will take years and years. And people will notice.
This is Johnson's malign legacy. The damage he has inflicted on this country will be absolutely incalculable.
You might want to read Rory Stewart's description of Johnson in an interview with Alastair Campbell for the magazine Men's Health. It seems quite accurate to me:
AC: What is it about Johnson that provokes the special rage?
RS: I’ve been having dreams about him, in which I apologise to him.
AC: Wow! We really are talking ‘Talking Heads’.
RS: I feel weirdly sorry for him and guilty about how much I feel I have to attack him. He’s a truly monstrous figure, a figure from a morality tale: his appetites, his lies – it’s all so unreal. But I also feel the tragedy of it, what an awful life he’s leading.
AC: Do you think he’s unhappy?
RS: He must be. I don’t understand how he can live that life and be happy. I think he finds it impossible to tell the truth. The word ‘bullshitting’ is interesting: a liar is aware of the truth and misleads; a bullshitter doesn’t mind what the truth is.
AC: He’s a liar and a bullshitter.
RS: Yes, but mostly a bullshitter – saying whatever is convenient. It must be odd to have nothing you really care about. Even the things he claims to care about, such as the Romans, are all a joke for him. This new biography about him, The Gambler, is interesting. It draws on the fact he watched his father beat up his mother and how his upbringing bred someone tough and resilient, almost like a gangster. He has no moral framework. I can’t believe that kind of person is happy.
Think about this. A British PM who finds it "impossible" to tell the truth.
He truly is a figure from a morality tale, he's the Pied Piper of Hamelin and millions followed his pipe to disaster. This is how he will be remembered.
It is the beginning of the end of Johnson but make no mistake he will be on trial for years. The days of reckoning will come soon enough.
