Boris Johnson is history. Or so hope Rishi Sunak, many other Tories, the sober parts of the media and most voters. Johnson’s terrible government, which ended only nine months ago, looks even more unlikely to have a sequel after this week’s extraordinarily critical report by the privileges committee on his lies to parliament about Partygate, and his equally extraordinary tantrum in response.
His three years in power, with the constant lying, corrupt sense of entitlement and lethal incompetence, are increasingly presented these days as an aberration, the product of a politician uniquely unsuited to rule us. It is now time to “move on” from the Johnson era, Tories have been saying all week, adopting the faux-casual language politicians always use when conducting awkward manoeuvres.
