When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus – Turkish Proverb
………………………..and so it ends. Boris Johnson has made his final appearance in the House of Commons as Prime Minister. Perhaps July 20th was the final time we would hear him speak in Parliament and perhaps it was his last appearance on the green benches. Does he really want to join his predecessor moodily lurking on the backbenches? Does his successor want him plotting behind his or her back with the ever-manoeuvring MPs outside the Cabinet? Will Johnson be drawn away by the lucrative US lecture tour circuit or a column back on the Daily Telegraph where he can tell his replacement how to do it? Who knows what the future holds for him and many would say, who cares?
A recently arrived Martian would have wondered why exactly this man was leaving office given his performance at his final PMQs. After all there was no contrition, no sense of apology or regret for past misdemeanours. Instead, we witnessed the usual display of bluster, insults, arm waving and exaggeration.
The fact that he had appointed a known sex pest to a senior post in the Whips’ Office and then denied knowledge of the individual’s past behaviour and sent Cabinet colleagues out on the airways to tell the world “he knew nothing” when there was evidence he very much did, seemed to be an event buried away in distant history rather than two weeks ago. Over two crazy days Ministers had resigned faster than an English batting collapse leaving the PM beleaguered and isolated with only one option available.
There was no evidence of this from anywhere on the Tory benches (with the exception of previous PM May) - instead the final Prime Minister’s Questions was an excuse for more bluster and gesticulations, and, of course, Johnson being economical with the truth with Tory MPs cheering him on. He had three achievements he saw as his legacy and nobody was going to stop him embellishing them. So let us examine Johnson’s self-defined three-part contribution to history.
Unsurprisingly, they were all fibs but like the best of fibs had a grain of truth to them.
Fib One – Johnson got Brexit done. This comes down to how one defines “done”. If done for you means Johnson sat down with a senior European Official and signed off a legally binding international agreement, then Boris did indeed get “Brexit done”. But if your definition of “done” includes implementation of the key elements of said agreement, he certainly has not. Indeed, the agreement is being shredded before our very eyes. A key element – the Northern Ireland Protocol – has yet to be negotiated. The Government has passed legislation which, if implemented, will unilaterally remove the Protocol from the agreement. This has been done without negotiation with the other party to the agreement and, as a trade war looms with our nearest trading partners, some would argue the Government’s actions are a breach of international law. In simple terms, arrangements that would manage the only land border between the UK and EU – the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic – have yet to leave the drawing board. I suppose Boris would say that apart from that he had got Brexit done.
The failure to get Brexit done goes further. As part of taking back control, ports are supposed to inspect goods coming into the country. Millions have been spent building warehouses and facilities for such inspections. Implementation of this has been kicked into the long grass at least twice and has now been kicked so far into the vegetation there must be some doubt it will ever happen. Apparently, the election winning slogan of “taking back control” is not quite so attractive in practice. Could this possibly be because port inspections mean delays which equals shortages in shops and would increase costs at a time of high-flying inflation?
Johnson has never defined what he means by “done”. So we do not know if in his mind it includes achieving all those promises made during the Referendum campaign. Loads of lucrative trade deals, VAT cuts, benefits of the Single Market without the bother of being in the EU, more NHS funding from the saved EU membership fee etc etc. He never talks about them these days so we must assume it does not. I wonder if the Brexit Opportunities Minister will survive the new PM. After all, if we do not know what they are after all this time perhaps we never will. There is a good chance Brexit will be quietly forgotten and we will have to just get used to being a poorer, isolated island off the coast of Europe.
Fib Two – fastest covid-19 vaccination rollout in Europe – this again depends on word definition. If fastest rollout means the UK getting the first jab into an arm, Boris did indeed achieve this. I would suggest a normal person’s definition would be a little more ambitious. Something like being first to vaccinate the total target population. On this more reasonable definition Boris failed and failed big time. Many European countries jabbed their target populations faster than England. Furthermore, many countries have gone much further in offering jabs than Boris has done. In North America they are now jabbing under 5s. The UK did not even bother to offer a fourth booster jabs to the extremely vulnerable 70 to 75 age group. So after a flying start with plenty of photo opportunities for Boris we fell back into the pack. Did the PM lose interest?
Fib Three – support for Ukraine – last Wednesday we were being asked to abandon all sense of proportion and believe that the UK, led by a wannabee Winston Churchill, was standing alone with plucky little Ukraine against the evil Russian bear. Now while we might have been the first to give Ukraine some bullets, we are certainly not its main arms, or indeed financial, supporter. That honour belongs to the United States. As always with Johnson the rhetoric exceeds the reality.
Perhaps Johnson’s focus on bullets and anti-tank missiles is a distraction from the UK’s limp performance when it comes to welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Poland and other European countries, to their credit, adopted a welcome them in and ask questions later approach.
Johnson decided anybody coming here was assumed to be a terrorist until they could provide the documentation to prove they were otherwise. All this was to be done online. So people fleeing a war zone had to find documents, a computer and a reliable internet connection to progress their application to come to the UK while finding somewhere to stay. This was, of course, deliberate. It plays to the Tory faithful to be supplying bombs and bullets while not allowing potentially dodgy eastern Europeans into the country. Johnson’s approach to Ukrainian refugees was shaped by the demonisation of Romanians, Bulgarians and Turks during the Referendum crisis.
So Johnson shuffles off to who knows what. He has set a new low when it comes to abusing the privileges of his office. Partygate, wasting public money on dodgy PPE, delaying Covid-19 lockdowns allowing people to die unnecessarily, putting a former KGB agent in the House of Lords who he had previously had a private meeting with while Foreign Secretary, lying to the Queen and proroguing Parliament illegally and, finally, not thinking that appointing a known sex pest to a senior position with responsibility for the welfare of colleagues was at all important.
Johnson was a performance. The blond ruffled hair, the bluster, the Bertie Wooster presentation, the dodgy Latin and Greek, the exaggerated achievements, the populist nationalism was all an act.
He was a Trump glazed with polish from Eton. It all came apart when the grease paint wore off.
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