Blast rites for Bojo

Tories must do right thing and finish off PM

I’D been thinking of throwing a party. No, seriously, don’t laugh. It was the significant other’s significant birthday.

Venue checked, band booked, furthest away guests invited, budget swallowed with a big gulp.

Then the Covid surge loomed and it was time to call the whole thing off. It was, as everybody sympathetically agreed, the decent thing to do. Didn’t, for some reason, think to call it a “work event” to get round the rules.

Guests implicitly agreed that going ahead would be the wrong thing to do. Tough, but nothing compared to the sacrifices of others while No10 partied like a prohibition Speakeasy.

Boris Johnson says he “implicitly believed” the drinks party he claims to have stumbled into was a work event, inviting the nation to believe in a Prime Minister who takes citizens for fools.

Leadership

He could have put his foot down when the rules applying to everyone else were being flouted in front of his eyes. Just once, early on, would have done it. A bit of leadership would have got the message across.

Instead he sailed on, captaining a Downing Street booze cruise through lockdown restrictions which saw families torn apart, even in the hour of death for their loved ones.

The image of the Queen in mournful isolation the day after No10 staff boozed into the early hours is a powerfully symbolic damnation of the entire scandal. We await the official report from Whitehall sleuth Sue Gray.

It was never her civil servant’s job to deliver a killer blow to the Johnson premiership. But her report is a minefield of unexploded bombs – not least those planted by Dominic Cummings – which could trigger the coup de grace on a political life that is already effectively over.

Trust, the lifeblood of a PM’S authority, has been terminated. Slippery Boris may attempt to slither through the Gray dynamite but the long game is up.

Critical is whether it can be shown he lied to Parliament. But convincing a pathological liar that they are lying might not be easy. Tory MPS are fearful of this PM leading them into a general election, or even the local elections.

But the backfiring defection of Tory Christian Wakeford turned the pork pie revolt stale before it could be served.

It threw the crestfallen Big Dog a bone. Bojo got his mojo back and determined to fight on, with a raft of Operation Red Meat announcements to shore up the crumbling edifice.

Tilting at the BBC and turning the lifting of Covid restrictions, and the nation’s health, into a political stunt.

Nothing to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis, mind. Chancellor Rishi Sunak must be too busy choosing his furniture for Number 10.

Johnson made fools of his own MPS over humiliating U-turns on free school meals and Tory MP Owen Paterson’s contempt for lobbying rules.

If they fail to do the right thing this week they will make fools of themselves and underpin the ongoing damage to British democracy.

It might suit Keir Starmer to see the Tories saddled with a laughing stock PM for a little longer.

But the only significant date in the PM’S diary should be his exit.