No ideas, no energy and now no excuses

CRINGING self-pity is added to lying, lawbreaking, incompetence, venality and indecency on Boris Johnson’s charge sheet.

A sleazy Prime Minister believing voters hearing about his bad behaviour is the problem rather than the terrible conduct itself is utterly deluded.

From Covid parties and jobs for his wife to the cost of living crisis and an ailing NHS, Johnson proves himself unfit for the most important office in the land.

Wife Carrie may soon need to return the favour and try to find him a nice little earner because odds are shortening on the loser surviving until the next general election.

Talk of a second and third election victory, remaining PM until the mid2030s, are fantasy from a serial liar.

Red wall and blue wall, Yorkshire and Devon, North and South giving the Conservatives the order of the boot in Wakefield and Tiverton last week is the writing on the wall for many Tory MPs who are scrambling to save their own seats.

It’s Johnson or them and Brexit’s no longer the charlatan’s diversion, 2016 leavers Wakefield and Tiverton recognising past promises were never delivered and Britain can do better without the Conservatives. Out of the country until Friday with Germany followed by Spain after Rwanda, the PM will return to a country clamouring for change. Former party chiefs Michael Howard and William Hague are Tory cheerleaders for a fresh Conservative PM. The switch would improve Tory prospects, as it did when John Major succeeded a dumped Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and Johnson himself replaced ousted Theresa May in 2019. Yet this could be a sea change moment like 1979, 1997 or 2007 when a public mood swing condemns a governing party to rejection. Four elections and 12 years and the tired, splintering Conservatives have run out of ideas, energy and excuses.

Britain does deserve better. Better than out-of-date Tories as well as self-pitying Johnson himself. This Government has a stench of death.