It’s time to get this cartoon monkey out of Downing Street
A Scots friend of mine often bites his fingernails. I enquired whether they were bitten to the quick on Saturday, during the Scotland/England game. “Quick?” he replied. “All the way up to the elbow.” A great sporting contest can be cathartic, and the Calcutta Cup match had a further advantage. For several hours, millions of people who had thought about little else for several weeks enjoyed the profound relief of forgetting about Boris Johnson.
Alas, however, the final whistle on that appalling fixture – Boris versus integrity – is still to come. Bojo himself would be well acquainted with the Ciceronian onslaught which ought to be quoted as his coup de grace (the only grace he deserves). “When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience… when is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?” For Catiline, read Boris.
But the resources of swagger and shamelessness are not yet exhausted. Apparently he has been telling people that it would take a panzer division to get him out of Downing Street. As usual, he is wrong. Even if we have a sixth-world leader, this is not a third-world country. It would not need tanks to remove Boris from office. The only requirement is for 181 Tory MPs to have the common sense to think straight and the courage to act in the national interest. If the Tory party is remotely true to itself, its past and its duty, that should be a simple matter.
Any Tory MP who is hesitating should ask himself a couple of questions. How could Boris possibly recoup the strength, the authority and the respect to lead a government? The next question follows on. We have surely learned from history that a serious country cannot function without serious leadership. Weak leaders always produce bad outcomes. Is this the time to disregard that dictum? Given the challenges we face, at home and abroad, is this the moment to have a jackanapes in office? For Boris, the premiership has always been a vanity project and always would be. So, Tory MPs, be clear on what basis he will ask for your support. He wants your assistance to go on running the British government as a massage-parlour for his own ego.
The other day, he used the phrase “cartoon monkey”. He seemed to be referring to himself. He should know. It would make a truthful title for his memoirs.
When Tory MPs do decide that there should be no more monkeying about with the truth in No.10, they will face the real question. Who next? One apparently serious candidate should be eliminated, because she is actually not serious. Liz Truss has qualities: those of a flashy light-weight. She is not cut from prime ministerial timber.
Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt and Tom Tugendhat will have admirers, and there is a paradox. We know a lot about them: more than we do about the current favourite in the polls: Rishi Sunak.
Even under a proper prime minister – indeed, especially under a proper prime minister – any Chancellor will have difficulty in establishing his own political identity. If there is discord between the neighbours in Nos. 10 and 11, the government will be in trouble: viz Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson. At the moment, friends of the PM are criticising Sunak for failing to come to Boris’s rescue. These friends are remaining anonymous. One suspects that they are off the record for a good reason: just enough self-knowledge to know that they lack credibility.
At present, however, a lot of serious economic commentators are coming close to querying Rishi Sunak’s credibility. Why is he putting up taxes, only to spend most of the money on relieving some of the pressure on living-standards? Does he not agree that we have to grow our way out of the current economic difficulties and that domestic consumption is the most important component of economic growth? A spike in inflation is alarming, but without growth, we could be condemned to stagflation.
It is time for the Chancellor to address these and other questions. In so doing, he would have two advantages. First, he should be able to display his mastery of the subject. Second, he would appeal to the public mood. A great number of voters have had it up to here with lies and clownishness. They are in the market for honesty and intellectual seriousness. I have long suspected that some of the disillusionment with politicians, even pre-Boris, has arisen because people are fed up with being talked down to. A politician who treated them as grown-ups would be seen as rising to the level of events.
That is Keir Starmer’s current strength. No one could accuse him of flashiness. That is why plenty of Tories were dismayed over the Jimmy Savile business when Boris showed his habitual contempt for the truth. A decent man was maligned by a man who has no concept of decency.
Sir Keir despises Boris, for obvious reasons. Yet there is a paradox. Two MPs do have every incentive to keep Boris in power. Nadine Dorries, because he would keep her in office, and Keir Starmer, because Bojo could help him to the premiership. It is to Sir Keir’s credit that he never attempts to hold back his disdain.
Returning to Rishi Sunak, if he were to make a big speech setting out his approach to the economy and his philosophy of government, there would be cries of “leadership bid”. So what? It is time for leadership bids, because it is time for leadership. It is time for Tory MPs to cease insulting the country which they claim to love by foisting this charlatan, this cartoon monkey who gives dishonesty a bad name – this disgrace who is not fit to be 12th man on Dogberry’s Watch – by foisting a great rogue on a great country. Tories, recover your self-respect.