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GONE AT LAST: BORIS JOHNSON’S FINAL DISGRACE » Bitter speech as he quits No10 » Dodgy boasts over his ‘legacy’
BITTER Boris Johnson finally skulked out of Downing Street yesterday, a shamed Prime Minister still blaming everyone but himself for his downfall.
In a speech full of dodgy claims and barely disguised fury, he tried to rewrite his own tawdry history as he moaned about rebels who forced him out in disgrace.
Before flying to Balmoral to formally offer his resignation to the Queen, he said in a 7.30am speech outside No10: “The baton will be handed over in what has unexpectedly turned out to be a relay race. They changed the rules halfway through, but never mind that now.”
He also gave himself credit for a series of supposed triumphs during his 37 months in office that left many scratching their heads.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner said: “Actually the legacy is scandal, sleaze, the highest inflation for decades, a cost of living crisis, the standard of living going down, the highest tax burden on the UK, GP waiting lists going up, the NHS engulfed in a crisis, our public services demoralised.
“He talked about levelling up, but we’ve seen levelling down across the UK.
“It’s been a damp squib and everyone’s poorer as a result.”
SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford said: “This is a Prime Minister who has undermined the office. He was a PM who broke the law while in office, who thought the rules weren’t for him.”
Lib Dem deputy leader Daisy Cooper said his term at No10 was
His legacy is scandal, sleaze, the highest inflation in decades, a cost of living crisis
ANGELA RAYNER DEPUTY LABOUR LEADER
“one of chaos, lies and law-breaking”. She added: “He made a mockery of this great office by running a Government fuelled by scandal and gross misconduct.”
Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “Boris Johnson standing outside Downing Street listing imaginary achievements in a desperate attempt to claim a legacy is not going to fool anyone.
“He was exposed as a liar and a charlatan. Good riddance to the worst PM of the modern era.”
Johnson’s “rule change” claim appeared to suggest he was ousted because the Tories’ backbench 1922 committee had signalled it would remove a block on a second vote of confidence being held within 12 months after he sailed through a first in June.
Allies admit he would most likely have been defeated in a second ballot, and they claim it means he was effectively forced out this way.
However, a second vote was never needed – because fed-up ministers quit his Government in droves in July after it emerged No10 had not told the truth over what the then-PM knew about shamed deputy chief whip Chris Pincher before giving him the job.
It was the last straw after a
series of scandals including Partygate, exposed by the Mirror, and the Owen Paterson affair in which Johnson tried to thwart a proposed ban on the ex-cabinet minister who broke lobbying rules. Tory MPs had also been shaken by the loss of the Red Wall seat of Wakefield, West Yorks, and the Devonshire seat of Tiverton and Honiton in disastrous by-elections in June.
Will Walden, who was the director of communications for Johnson as Mayor of London, said of the departing PM’s speech: “It wasn’t particularly dignified, reflective or statesmanlike – and at the beginning it was pretty bitter.”
Johnson was watched by wife Carrie, 34, sister Rachel, 57, and staunch allies including Nadine Dorries as he congratulated himself on a series of supposed successes that did not stand up to scrutiny.
He likened himself to a booster rocket “that has fulfilled its function and I will now be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific”.
He and Carrie were then driven in an armoured Range Rover to RAF Northolt for the flight to Aberdeen.
At Balmoral, Carrie giggled as she was greeted by a uniformed official as Johnson looked on in apparent irritation, while a trick of the camera made it appear he had an enormous hand.