The wounds of Thatcher’s assassination took decades to heal – what price will the Tories pay for this political death?
IT was all over for Boris Johnson last night, whether he quits as PM or is sacked by the party he led to a landslide victory just over two years ago.
In a bloodthirsty version of Margaret Thatcher’s last days, Cabinet ministers — including former loyalist diehards — lined up to tell their boss they no longer support his premiership.
The PM won’t quit. He will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of Downing Street.
Last night, the infamous Men in Grey Suits — representing the all-powerful 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs — stood ready to assist.
Boris barely survived a recent confidence vote, in which 148 Tory MPs went against him. Under present rules, he cannot be challenged again for a year. Now the “suits” are prepared to change those rules, telling the PM to resign or face another, terminal, challenge.
Last night’s manoeuvres were the climax of a torrid 24 hours for a man whose frequent escape from certain death has seen him nicknamed the Greased Piglet. It began on Tuesday evening with the resignations of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health supremo Sajid Javid.
It continued with a string of resignations by junior ministers and aides. And it grew into a stampede as Cabinet members gathered in Downing Street to ambush the PM.
Boris is paying a terrible and painful price for giving serial sex pest Tory MP Chris Pincher a job in his Government. BoJo’s denials and evasions were the last straw.
To senior players in his long-suffering party it was the final unforgivable misjudgement after Partygate, multiple by-election defeats and Downing Street denials followed by grovelling apologies.
He may be living on fumes, but only wild horses will drag this defiant PM out of Number Ten. “I’m hanging on,” he insisted. You have to wonder if it is worth the pain. Yesterday’s televised torture was pitiful to observe, beginning with what was almost certainly his final outing at Prime Minister’s Questions.
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Labour leader Keir Starmer took predictable advantage of an open goal. But the truly devastating attacks came from BoJo’s own side. Three hundred Tory MPs might owe him their seats and their 80-plus majority, but it didn’t stop them levelling charges of serial dishonesty.
There is no such thing as gratitude in politics. And PMQs was just the warm-up for the main event. Boris’s testimony later to the Liaison Committee of watchdog MPs was like witnessing someone being flayed alive.
Systematic and hostile bear pit pile-on
The 34 Select Committee chairs gleefully — almost sadistically — took turns to torment the beleaguered PM, peppering him with loaded questions about his relationship with the truth.
This bear pit was an opportunity for a systematic and hostile pile-on which, under Tory chairman Sir Bernard Jenkin, was allowed to run amok with insinuation and insult.
This public flogging was an exhibition of blatant contempt for a PM, whose survival can now be measured in days despite his refusal to resign. Indeed, the Tory grandees seemed to relish the humiliation of their former hero.
Nor were they alone. Baby-faced political killer Michael Gove claimed he “bitterly regrets” knifing Boris during his 2016 leadership fight with Theresa May.
But “The Gover”, rewarded by Boris with Cabinet posts, was at it again yesterday, telling BoJo he “must go”. Soon after he was axed from his Cabinet post. Yet Boris was impressively cheerful in the circumstances. Almost as if, like Margaret Thatcher on her final performance as PM in 1990, he could say: “I’m enjoying this.”
Would he quit as PM, he was asked. “No, no, no,” protested Mr Johnson. But he knows in his heart it’s all over. The PM’s Commons performance was like a condemned man, laughing at his tormentors as they dragged him to the gallows. “Hang on and fight on,” cried Boris as they tightened the noose.
The job of a Prime Minister when he has been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that is what I’m going to do.
Boris Johnson
“The job of a Prime Minister when he has been handed a colossal mandate is to keep going and that is what I’m going to do.” But it was all bluster. Boris is finished.
No Prime Minister can survive the resignations of a Chancellor in the midst of a financial crisis or a Health Secretary during a health service meltdown, still less an all-out Cabinet meltdown.
Nor is there any prospect of him calling a snap election. He has a substantial majority and is still only half-way through the Parliamentary term. The Queen would be entitled to find someone else who might form a government. That would provoke a stampede by at least a dozen ambitious Tory wannabes.
The big question facing the Conservative Party now is: What happens next? They have no idea who will replace Boris or whether they will be any good as PM.
And whatever his faults, the party grass roots love BoJo for Brexit — still the key dividing line in British politics.
He has the rare ability to make people smile and take selfies. The wounds of Margaret Thatcher’s assassination took decades to heal.
It might take a long time to get over the political death of Boris Johnson.
