It is possible he also loses his seat but quite frankly it is difficult to see why he wants to remain an MP when he can travel the globe making his rehearsed “off the cuff” speeches. Sunak wants rid of him, which is why he has given his MPs a free vote on the inquiry findings but whether the overly sentimental Tories can bear to admit they, too, were misled is doubtful. One sees the occasional glimpse of the politician he could have been when he talks about Ukraine but he will be remembered more for ridiculous wallpaper than any great geo-political stance.Īs for getting Brexit done, he didn’t. His clowning looks cheap and disrespectful. The utter self-belief that propelled him to power is now revealed as monstrous arrogance. He may take us for fools but we are not one of his cast-off mistresses. I am sure he will put on the show of his life on Wednesday but many are exhausted by this Trumpian post-truth blur of deceit. There are those who still think he is charmed, that lockdown was unnecessary, that his rule-breaking is less important than his ability to win elections. A lot of the Tory party have too there is no way back for him but he refuses to hear that. Especially those whose loved ones died alone and whose funerals were small bleak affairs as they stuck to the rules. “Not me guv, I was just doing what I was told,” is highly dubious coming from a man who never does what he is told. There were so many gatherings perhaps he will hope, too, to bamboozle the committee, arguing that he believed that they all had “workplace exemption” and what he said in the House was only what he was advised to say. Also blows another great gaping hole in the PM’s account doesn’t it?”. He said it could not be “argued it was necessary for work purposes. Jack Doyle, his own director of communications, said of the June birthday party: “I’m struggling to come up with a way this one is in the rules in my head”. He insisted the guidance was followed and no rules were broken. There were parties on November 13 about which he was quizzed in the Commons by Labour MP Catherine West. We have seen the pictures of him at parties. He was fined by the police for a party on June 10. It will remind us all of the chaos of the Johnson administration and the darkest times of the pandemic. It will disrupt the cabinet – as Braverman is said to back him – and any notion of Tory unity. What a sordid business this all is.Īs ever, this is not about the good of the party or the country it is about one man only. His attack dogs Nadine Dorries and Conor Burns are out there trying to undermine the committee before his four-hour performance. Rules are for others this, after all, has always been his modus operandi. He clearly considers himself above the law. Those talks now do seem to be a mistake, yet what Johnson is really saying is not that these people are not fit to judge him, but that he should not be judged at all. Though the committee comprises seven MPs – four of which are Tories – Johnson is gunning for Harriet Harman, saying she has prejudged the case, and for Gray as she has been in talks with Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, over a role as his chief of staff. Clearly he hopes it will get lost in a farrago of innuendo about the members of the committee and Sue Gray herself. The big question remains “Did he lie to parliament?”. So as he prepares to give evidence to the Privileges Committee, his outriders are saying that any claims he misled Parliament about parties during lockdown in Downing Street are being investigated by a committee that is itself unlawful and biased. His supporters never tried to say that he was not a liar, more that somehow the lies did not matter. His lies were apparently “priced in” to his appeal. When Boris Johnson became leader of the Tory Party, almost everyone who had worked with him told us he was not trustworthy. ![]() ![]() He was never going to make a dignified exit because he never knew how to make a dignified entrance.
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