Try as one might, it would be hard to come up with a more shamelessly bogus argument in support of Boris Johnson keeping his job than the one at which Priti Patel clutched on the eve of the platinum jubilee last week. Conservative MPs who are discontented with the prime minister’s leadership should stop their plotting because they risked overshadowing the celebrations of the Queen’s 70 years on the throne, the home secretary told the Daily Mail. All the focus should be on the jubilee and on the monarch, she insisted.
As counterfeit arguments go, this takes a lot of beating. Not only was the jubilee being opportunistically invoked as the latest in an ever lengthening line of other things – the Covid pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, the local elections, the Scotland Yard investigation, the Gray report, the cost of living crisis, the upcoming byelections – that supposedly made it necessary and patriotic for Mr Johnson to retain his post. It was also particularly shameless to invoke the Queen so selectively. When the Queen was asked to prorogue parliament illegally, or Downing Street partied on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, or Mr Johnson tried to trash the good relations so carefully built with Ireland by the Queen’s visit, it is hard to recall Ms Patel, or any other cabinet minister, leaping up to urge a different course of action for the Queen’s sake.
