British Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie Johnson were greeted with boos when arriving at a thanksgiving service for the Queen at St Paul’s Cathedral (Henry Nicholls/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)The jeers for Boris Johnson at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday tell you nothing that the polling won’t. Despite the delusions — or lies — of his fast-receding tide of allies, his administration is over. Labour is 20 points ahead in Wakefield, where there is a by-election on June 23. Tiverton, also due a by-election on that day, looks almost as vulnerable to the Liberal Democrats. We have a vote of confidence tonight.
Whatever happens, he will be a one-term prime minister — a fate which fits him perfectly. For men like Johnson, the wanting is better than the having. Campaigning is romantic, but governing is real. But since few people read polling data, it was good to hear the people sing the song of angry men. No one can call the sort of people who haunt royal thanksgiving services dangerous revolutionaries or “woke warriors”. (We must resist invented wars or fate will give us real ones). Even the most optimistic Downing Street staffer will call them Conservative leaning. It was another poll, shouted, and it was archaic, as if they had jostled his carriage to throw down a gauntlet. That will speak to the pseudo-historian in him.
