Tories are turning on their boss

Boris Johnson is not just a lousy prime minister. He is also a useless politician. And had he been better at being both, he would not be in the predicament he is today. Now it’s too late for Johnson to do better. Tory MPs and grassroots activists are turning on him, and very soon his Cabinet will too.

This man, with ambitions beyond his ability, will be consigned to the political graveyard. Few will mourn his passing.

The relationship between the Conservative party and its leaders has always been a transactional one.

The deal is that the leader stays put only as long as they can deliver votes.

And when the leader loses their grip, the Tories stick a knife in their back with a ruthlessness Vladimir Putin would admire.

Tories loved Margaret Thatcher until they didn’t, and turfed her out without so much as a thank you for the elections she had won them.

They swiftly silenced Quiet Man Iain Duncan Smith because he couldn’t turn up the volume.

They laughed and danced a jig when Theresa May was dragged from Downing Street weeping. Nice, they are not.

Boris Johnson lost it long ago. It has just taken the Tories more time than usual to clock it.

STUNNED

This newspaper was ideologically opposed to Mr Johnson from the beginning.

But even we were stunned by the frequency with which he not only slipped on banana skins, but peeled the bananas himself so he could put the skins under his own feet.

Any other Prime Minister would have seen that trying to get dodgy Tory Owen Paterson off the hook by changing Commons sleaze rules would not wash, and would put his party through the wringer.

Any other PM would have seen that holding boozy parties at No10 against Covid rules would infuriate a nation which had obeyed them.

And any other PM would have seen that last week’s apology for doing so was six weeks too late. Had Mr Johnson said sorry when dogged work by the Mirror’s Pippa Crerar uncovered the first two shameful No10 shenanigans, he might, just might, have got away with it.

Had he made a clean breast of all the other outrageous gatherings he knew about, instead of lying and dissembling, he might, just might, have limited the damage.

So Mr Johnson’s failure to do so is not just appalling personal behaviour, but atrocious misjudgment.

That’s why his MPs really want rid of him: because he is such a political dunderhead.

They care more about keeping their seats at the next election than they do about the costof-living crisis, more about their cushy jobs than about our energy bills.

They sniff Mr Johnson’s self-inflicted wounds and circle like the self-serving sharks that they are. They have seen the writing on the wall and the message reads: You will be stuffed without a new leader.

Boris Johnson should never have entered politics and should have stuck to journalism.

But, then again, he was fired in that profession too.