Within minutes of the greased piglet proving to be rather less slippery than his supporters had expected, Operation Save Big Dog went into overdrive, with loyal MPs sticking their faces in front of any passing TV camera. First up was Nadhim Zahawi. “There was a ballot,” he said. Nothing gets past him. “Fifty plus one is a majority and Boris did much better than that.” Er, quite. If by better, you mean worse than Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May, both of whom were effectively finished as prime minister.
The education secretary pressed on. Struggling to explain the magnitude of the joy that would be felt throughout the world at Boris Johnson’s miraculous triumph, Zahawi alighted on Ukraine. Thousands of people who had been sheltering from Russian airstrikes in the Donbas would be taking to the streets to cheer the Convict. What’s more, Volodymyr Zelenskiy would be offering up prayers for Johnson’s temporary salvation. As if on cue, the Ukrainian president did indeed tweet his pleasure. He takes his job as Boris’s therapist very seriously. That will be 80 guineas and two chieftain tanks for that intervention.
James Cleverly also intervened, once again highlighting the fallibility of nominative determinism. It was a clear win for the Convict, he insisted. And there was no other person in the party who could have won even 60% of the vote. Because the rest of the cabinet – including him – were completely fucking hopeless and there wasn’t a single one who could be trusted to get themselves dressed in the morning. Not that the Convict could manage that either, judging by the state of him. Every day he looks increasingly derelict. And even if there was one cabinet minister capable of rivalling him, the majority of backbenchers were just a bunch of congenitally disloyal snakes. It wasn’t the best advert for the Tory party.
If anything, the backbenchers were even more deranged. Peter Bone, who had plotted against the Maybot and declared her a goner after her confidence vote, was now openly saying that Boris – smaller majority and all – had proved himself a winner and should be left alone. It wasn’t for dissident MPs to replace a prime minister except when it suited them. In his defence, his synapses only connect at random intervals, so it may take him a while to spot the contradiction.
Adam Holloway was insistent that it was all the BBC’s fault for showing pictures of the Convict looking like Hannibal Lecter. Anthony Hopkins could sue for that. Lecter looked a whole lot better than Johnson does right now. The eyes are barely open, the legs only function from memory, the skin is parched and pallid, and the toddler haircut is falling apart.
You could almost suspect that Johnson had been on the coke after his own sniff-filled TV clip. But the reality is that it isn’t class A drugs that make Boris so hopelessly incoherent. He mainlines that state through his natural sociopathic narcissism. It’s a rarity now if he happens to complete a sentence. Accurately transcribe what he says and you get the babblings of a three-year-old.
At least Michael Fabricant will never die wondering why he has never been promoted to a serious job. Now think of just some of the quarter-wits – take a bow Suella Braverman and Oliver Dowden – who have made it into cabinet, and you begin to get a glimpse of how breathtakingly dim Micky Fab is. Something he appears hell bent on proving on a daily basis. His take was he had been expecting the Convict to do even worse, so this was a massive result. Er. Not sure that was quite the line.
Bob Seely was refreshingly frank and pragmatic. He didn’t much care for Boris. Never had, never would. But No 10 had made him a cash offer for his Isle of Wight constituency that he hadn’t been able to refuse. So he had voted for Johnson. And would continue to do so just as long as the dosh kept coming. The relationship was entirely transactional and Seely couldn’t have been happier.
Pride of place for the idiot’s idiot in the Tory wankocracy went to Brendan Clarke-Smith. He argued that he was sick to death of people weaponising their Covid tragedies to have a pop at Johnson. The pandemic was now over and everyone should just shut up about their losses – hadn’t the whole point of Brexit been to forge a new generation of British stiff upper lips? – and get on with it. So your mum died? Big fucking deal. Everyone’s gotta croak some time. So why not just be happy for Boris instead of going on about law-breaking?
Cabinet ministers, such as Liz Truss, Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak, were rather more neutral in their support. If one of them had the imagination, the wit and the talent, they’d be looking to ease the Convict out. But they are all hopeless so they did the bare minimum, hoping someone else would be the first to knife Boris. No one did, so they were obliged to sit like tailors’ dummies while Johnson did a TV clip – every bit as tone deaf as his appeal to Tory MPs the day before – at the start of the cabinet meeting.
The day after the day the Boris music died ended with just four Tory backbenchers being bothered to attend a debate on standards in public life. Obviously the others must have felt they had done enough. Labour’s Angela Rayner opened with a simple plea. Johnson had done his best to undermine the integrity of his office and must not be allowed to get away with watering down the ministerial code.
You might have thought that was a relatively uncontroversial proposition, but Michael Ellis begged to differ. Then he always does. That’s the point of him. He’s the Convict’s go-to dogsbody to clean up his shit. Keeper of the King’s Stools.
Ellis oozed and ahhed, ever so ’umbly. It wasn’t that Boris wanted to weaken the ministerial code. It was that he wanted to make it stronger by making it weaker. Schrödinger’s code. You just couldn’t expect someone as law-abiding as Johnson to obey the law. There should be some leeway where Boris could do what he wanted and decide if he had broken the law. And that applied to his mates too. Such a shame to have to sack someone he liked.
Just another tawdry day in Westminster.
