The people know Boris is brave enough to spring Britain from this nightmare
An airline captain once told me that passengers shouldn’t fear turbulence. It was when things got really bumpy that pilots upped their game. That theory is being tested to destruction right now in Downing Street. Our new Prime Minister has
Most painfully of all, Boris’s own brother, Jo, kicked him in the Johnsons at this most vulnerable moment
gone from honeymoon to funeral in his first three parliamentary days.
Boris has lost every single vote in the Commons and 22 of his own colleagues. Some of the Conservative Party’s biggest names were banished like a bad fairy at a Disney christening. Ruth Davidson, who drove back the SNP hordes in Scotland, left to spend more time with her baby. A huge loss. Most painfully of all, Boris’s own brother, Jo, kicked him in the Johnsons at this most vulnerable moment. He quit the Government in the worst act of fratricide since Ed did in David Miliband.
Boris’s enemies in a Parliament and media which are heavily biased toward Remain can hardly contain their glee. “Unmitigated chaos,” gloats one. “Lame duck,” quacks another. “Is this the c----est PM ever?” At his press conference in Wakefield yesterday, a reporter asked the PM if he would become the next member of the Johnson family to resign. Ouch. Thanks a bunch, bro!
Is Boris really finished before he’s even begun? Quite the opposite.
Millions of normal people who aren’t banging those insufferable drums of dreadlocked doom on College Green are thankful that he’s brave enough to take a hard and unpopular line; the only way to spring Britain from this nightmare limbo. A Downing Street insider said that yesterday morning the PM was “bizarrely buoyed” by the bruising events of the previous day. The curtain had finally fallen away, confirming what we suspected all along – Labour doesn’t want Brexit to happen.
Through their Surrender Bill, they’d rather postpone it indefinitely and let the EU decide when, or if, we’re allowed out. “Corbyn’s behaviour made Boris doubly determined to get
Brexit done by any means,” the aide said. “It’s a bumpy road but he’s going to ride it out. It’s a case of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
The PM has been attacked for the “purge” of colleagues from his own side, but that ruthlessness is intended to send a strong signal. “We have to show that this is very different from Theresa May’s government,” a member of Boris’s team said. “With May, there might have been no punishment at all for siding with the Opposition. But 60 per cent of Tory members voted for Boris because they wanted him to do things differently.”
Too true. Miles from the increasingly grotesque Westminster pantomime, people are not shocked that Parliament will be prorogued. They’re delighted that Boris is actually keeping his promise to leave on Oct 31 “do or die” and that wild horses on their bended knees could not drag him to Brussels to ask for another extension. They’re not fools.
They can see that the only “coup” is the one by MPS against Leave voters who have been waiting three years to see the referendum result delivered. Once they were merely cynical and fed up. Now they’re angry.
But they’re also relieved that Boris is giving us 20,000 new police officers to keep our streets safe. Imagine Jeremy Corbyn making that speech the PM gave yesterday in front of those new recruits in Yorkshire. You can’t, can you? It’s time for the People’s Priorities, not Parliament’s.
As for those taking out the smelling salts and wailing about the Tory Party becoming a “narrow sect”, they don’t seem to understand that without Brexit, their “broad church” will soon be a ruined cathedral with only the ghost of greatness. Boris gets it. Conservative voters get it. Labour Leave voters get it.
The forthcoming election will not just be any old poll. It will be an existential struggle for the soul of our country against a bitter old Marxist and his unmerry men. The stakes could not be higher.
None of this is easy for a PM whose default setting is mirth and buoyancy. You could tell yesterday that his brother’s betrayal had hurt him – something less certain about the eyes – but he soldiered on. What other choice is there? I’m told that Dilyn, the Welsh rescue puppy, is so adorable that it’s acting as a de facto Downing Street therapy dog. I hope its new master takes some comfort there.
Boris Johnson is a patriot. He is ready and millions of us, whose voices are rarely reported, are grateful to him. We can’t wait to vote Boris when the time comes. And it’s coming. Yes, it’s been a bumpy week but our captain is upping his game to power on through the turbulence. Fasten your seat belts!