No Mo Mojo, BoJo

Professional arseling and three times Olympic champion in the "hairstyle so bad we're blaming it on ghosts" category Boris Johnson is, it seems, finally gone. Properly gone, or good as, relegated to a column in the Daily Fail, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing except the insignificance of weight loss pills.

Having invested so much in following the fortunes of this political personification of buffoonery so realistic that clowns were once scared he'd render their entire sector obsolete, I feel obligated to at least say something at this point. But I will keep this short, because (1) I've already said all I need to say about BoJo by now anyway and (2) if I were to be any more honest about Boris and his cronies, and certain other rather larger segments of the Tory party, I cannot think of any way I would express that properly in a way that wouldn't be classed as hate speech*.

* Though Andrew Marr's beautiful poem, "I'm so bored of Boris Johnson I could vomit" is a worthy attempt - alas that I lack his wordsmithing.

I watched last week's revelations on the Partygate report with abject glee. Ironically, since it seems to so clearly and totally vindicate everything I've said, there seems little point in me actually reading it in full. What was even more heartening was the news coverage, especially that from ordinary people on Radio 5 : "Isn't there a danger that this will make Boris Johnson into a kind of martyr ?" asked Nicky Campbell. "Only by a few people," responded a listener, "who will be considered to be mad".

Marvellous. Likewise, I'm not sure I'm going to agree with former Telegraph editor Max Hastings on many things, but what he said about Boris was bang-on : "You can say that this stuff doesn't matter," he said about the lockdown parties, "but what you can't say is that it didn't happen." Which nails it. Boris' cult followers (for those are the only real supporters he has left) are, predictably, still claiming it's all about the parties themselves, that it was only some cake, that everyone broke the lockdown rules a little bit, that it's all hypocrisy because Keir Starmer once had a beer or Bernard Jenkins talked to his own wife... it's all nonsense, all of it. Even if, just for the sake it, hypocrisy was a factor, the parties themselves were not the issue. The issue was the lying.

Boris lied. He lied again and then lied about lying. He does it perpetually and probably quite literally cannot stop himself, not just about partygate but about pretty much everything. As one of his cultists said, "It's not that he deliberately tells lies, it's that he's bored by the truth". 

Blink. 

Err... righty-hoo, and you're... not seeing how this makes him unsuitable for office ? No ? Off you fuck then.

Does every politician lie ? Likely yes, because every human being lies from time to time. But not every politician routinely tells lies to get what they want. Not every politician is so enthralled by their own gargantuan sense of entitlement that they don't feel the need to apologise or correct the record when they're told to, steps normal people take because they at least feel ashamed when they're caught. In truth, Boris is different from normal people, not in the "it doesn't matter because it's me" way that he thinks he is, but in that he literally feels no embarrassment about what he's done. Ordinary people feel ashamed when caught, but at least part of that is about what it is that they've done. For Boris, if it's anything at all, it's only about being found out, and nothing else.

Frank Herbert said, "respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality". Boris doesn't have any of that. While their are many differences between him and Trump, there are also similarities, and his routine attacks on proper procedure and democratic institutions are chief among those. It's hard to tell if this is because he does actually realise that what he's done is wrong but doesn't care, or genuinely doesn't believe himself capable of committing any wrongdoing whatsoever. Either way, it's kind of a tragedy.

What I really wish would happen is that firstly Boris would just sod off completely and we'd never hear from him again, and that secondly he'd have an epiphany. He'd wake up one morning realising the full magnitude of what he'd done, to find himself with a modicum of self-awareness. Now at one point I would have wished this as a means of reform, but I'm long past that. Instead, I only wish this upon him now purely out of a punitive desire for spite, because I want him to suffer.

While, in the light of the vote overwhelmingly in favour of the official Partygate report, Boris' fawning acolytes are sadly not going to instigate a full-blown civil war within the party, it's pretty much assured that that won't shut up about him anytime soon. And there are some seriously impressive mental gymnastics being done here. Michael Gove, the only man who rivals Nigel Farage for his uncanny resemblance to a toad, and who famously stabbed Boris in the back by running against him in a leadership contest, admits that the lockdown party videos are "indefensible", but then says that those present who received honours shouldn't have them rescinded. No, we must follow proper procedure, it was Boris Johnson's right as Prime Minister to grant those honours.

Excuse me ? We must follow the proper procedure and allow a lawbreaking lawmaker to give honours to people themselves found to have violated the laws ? Breaking the COVID laws and lying about it carries next to no consequence, but forbidding peerages to those breaking the rules and lying about it - that's where we draw the line ? Well, that doesn't make sense, unless you're a cultist. 

To give the Tories their due : this sort of egregious cultism isn't their normal practise. This sort of personality-based politics isn't usual. No-one accused May of even being liked, nobody saw Cameron as beyond reproach, nobody put Major on a pedestal. Thatcher, maybe, was different, but even then the party knew when to quit. This is how the party survives, and while Boris was once popular, fortunately that was nowhere near the extent he'd have needed to remake the party in his own image, a la Trump and the Republicans*. It was never more than a marriage of convenience, except for a few diehards. For them it's all about who Boris is, not what he says or does or thinks, regardless even of how he treats them personally. The Nadine Dorries** of the world simply don't care about stuff like that.

* So far as I can tell, the groundwork for that sort of transformation had been steadily laid down for many years before Trump even took office : the Republican party was already a cult in search of a leader, and that's just not really the case with the Tories - however vehemently I might oppose their ideologies.

** A remarkable lady, graced with all the culture war antics of J. K. Rowling but none of the redeeming features. Refusing to resign until she discovers the "sinister forces" at work that blocked her peerage ? Dear or dear. Peers become entitled, you don't get them merely by having a sense of entitlement. 

The Tory party is now essentially having their own Corbyn moment. Labour belatedly realised when the cause was hopeless and implemented sweeping (but gradual and incremental), highly disciplined reforms to oust the unelectable hard left. Unfortunately for the Tories, a similar process looks unlikely to begin anytime soon. They already tried replacing BoJo with the even madder, stupider, and more genuinely ideological Liz Truss, because that's the kind of crazed loons that form the party faithful. Sunak was then appointed really only by default, and he appears to be largely both rudderless and spineless. Rudderless, because he has no clear idea of where he wants the party to go, how it will get there, or why it needs to move. Spineless, because he lacks the conviction to enforce any sort of ideology even if he ever found one, or even stand up to the remaining loonies. In short, a complete non-entity.

How bad the damage will be is not yet known. Damage there shall surely be, but don't count the Tories out completely just yet. It's unlikely they'll truly collapse; their base support still exists, their core ideologies are not overthrown. Fortune's wheel is, however, ever turning, and while it might not grind them into dust, it has every chance of flinging them into the wilderness for a good long while.