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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Liam Thorp

Good riddance Boris Johnson, Liverpool always had your number

Scousers are often proved to be right in the end.

Sometimes there is an unfair tag placed on people from Liverpool that they cling to grudges and are unable to let things go. The reality is that this city knows when something - or someone - is not right and is not afraid to say so.

When it comes to Boris Johnson, it's safe to say that Scousers had his number years ago. There won't be many people in this city who are either surprised or saddened to see the dramatic collapse of the Prime Minister's political career in recent days.

Johnson, as many will know, was editor of the Spectator magazine when it so callously besmirched the reputations of everyone in this proud city. The soon-to-depart Prime Minister allowed disgraceful words to be published about hard-working Scousers, the Hillsborough families and Ken Bigley, the Liverpool engineer so brutally murdered in Iraq in 2004.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson to stand down as Prime Minister today - live updates, news and reaction

Johnson may well have been dragged up to Liverpool by his then party leader Michael Howard to offer a forced and deeply disingenuous apology at the time - but that didn't matter, Liverpool already knew exactly what this man was all about. When he first became Prime Minister he was asked to apologise from the despatch box for the pain he had caused in the city, but of course he declined.

In the years following, far too many people have been taken in by the bumbling, messy-haired character that Boris Johnson has attempted to portray. Many of those same people will have told those in Liverpool to move on and accept his apology. But this city has a habit of sticking to its guns once it has got the measure of someone - and my word did they have it right about Boris Johnson.

I wrote similar comments when Johnson, just months into his time as Prime Minister - and without a mandate from the British people - chose to unlawfully suspend Parliament in a bid to force through his own will. Sadly this egregious act wasn't enough to dissuade millions from voting him into power just weeks later and plunging this country into one of the most humiliating and shameful periods in its history.

While many here in Liverpool will be delighted to witness such an ignominious ending for this charlatan of a Prime Minister, there won't be too many celebrations in the knowledge of what may come next. While Johnson has plumbed new depths in terms of standards and behaviour in the nation's highest office, whoever replaces him will still be a Conservative and will still be unlikely to treat this city in a fair and decent way.

After all it was David Cameron and George Osborne, regarded by some as more moderate than Johnson, who unleashed a decade of hellish austerity measures on this city and others. Those policies and devastating budget cuts have caused irreparable damage to communities here and that suffering continues to this day as the cost of living crisis bites. There won't be much hope that whoever steps forward to take the reigns of this chaotic shambles of a government will do much to address that pain.

Nevertheless, Scousers will allow themselves a wry smile today as they watch the job Boris Johnson always believed he was born to do be dragged away from him in such an unedifying manner, I dare say a few pints around this city will be raised to his departure today.

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