Boris Johnson had no choice but to go… but one thing is certain, he won’t disappear
IT was a classic Bonny and Clyde climax.
Two blonde bombshells, Boris Johnson and ex-Cabinet gunslinger Nadine Dorries, running hand-in-hand into a hail of enemy bullets.
Boris had no choice. Even if, as polls suggest, he could have fought and won a by-election in Uxbridge, the ex-PM was stitched up like a kipper.
“I have received a letter from the Privileges Committee making it clear, much to my amazement, that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament,” said a furious BoJo.
“They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.”
The Privileges Committee verdict on Partygate was a foregone conclusion from the moment it was set up a year ago by his Labour nemesis Harriet Harman.
“I am bewildered and appalled that I have been forced out,” said Boris, with seething defiance.
“I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it.
“Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.”
He is right. Whatever defence Boris could muster — and to be fair, it was pretty flimsy — he had already been hung, drawn and quartered, his dream of a comeback in ruins.
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No other verdict but “guilty” was possible the moment hatchet-faced Hattie went over the top.
For ex-Culture supremo Nadine, her alternative media career already in full bloom, quitting her seat as an MP was a no-brainer.
There was no future in Parliament for her under Rishi Sunak or any other Tory leader.
Together, she and Boris have left Rishi Sunak, already reeling from criticism from within his own party, with a monstrous headache.
Two key elections which, if Labour and the Lib Dems do a likely deal, will cast a dark cloud over already dwindling Tory hopes for the real 2024 battle for survival.
Nor were they simply reacting in fury against the MPs who set themselves up as judge and jury.
Too easily seduced
This was as much a direct attack on Rishi Sunak’s authority as Prime Minister as it was a resentment at being fingered as a liar — for “misleading” Parliament.
Boris and his allies have never forgiven Rishi for resigning as Chancellor of the Exchequer at his moment of greatest weakness.
However much he protests, they see it as a deliberate act of political homicide.
So what of Boris now?
One thing is certain — this giant of 21st century politics is not going to simply disappear.
Boris is the man who can with some justice claim to have delivered single-handedly what the majority of British voters prayed for in the 2016 Brexit referendum.
Whatever his private misgivings — and there were many — he seized the moment and won not just an 80-seat landslide majority but captured swathes of Labour strongholds for the first time ever.
Many will claim that it was nothing to do with Boris personally and that this was a historic moment whose time had come.
But this is only half the story. Johnson was able to reach parts of the electorate who, for any other Tory, would have been deeply hostile to an Old Etonian toff asking for their votes.
It is also true that, as Prime Minister with a huge majority, he squandered that tremendous advantage.
He was too easily seduced by the green agenda on which he had previously been so clear-sightedly sceptical.
He was far too slow, even before Covid, to launch the measures which would have made a clear and irreversible success of Brexit.
He refused to tackle the thorny issue of mass illegal immigration.
And then, as he basked in the prospect of ten more years in No 10, Covid struck and threw all the pieces to the wind — bringing him sensationally to the brink of death in Downing Street.
This is the end of Boris Johnson MP. But it is only the beginning of a never-ending fairytale which has nothing to do with the shape and future of Great Britain plc.
Boris is The Story and has been since he began as a humble Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.
It takes a rare and special genius to parlay a newspaper column into first-name global fame, international superstar status and leadership of one of the world’s richest nations.
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In Boris Johnson’s case it propelled him — in headline terms at least — to his childhood dream as “World King”.
As he sits today amid the wreckage of a brief but pyrotechnic political career, BoJo could be forgiven for thinking: “Wow! What a ride.”