The cult of World King BoJo is luring the Tories on to the rocks. It must stop…for Britain’s sake
BORIS JOHNSON was dead right when he blasted hanging judge Harriet Harman’s “kangaroo court” for its premeditated guilty verdict.
The ex-deputy Labour leader had all but donned the black cap before her show trial had even begun.
Boris did not have to be paranoid to suspect her Privileges Committee star chamber was out to get him.
But none of this means BoJo is innocent. OK?
There may never have been a snowflake’s chance of him being acquitted of lying to Parliament once the cogs were in motion.
But he played more than a walk-on part in his own execution.
Labour was bent on destroying the only Tory figure who might have robbed them of victory at the next election.
Leader Sir Keir Starmer has publicly admitted he “loathed” his former adversary.
The committee’s Labour chairman, Sir Chris Bryant, stepped aside because he could not conceal his contempt for the ex-PM.
He at least showed some integrity — which is more than can be said for Hattie Harman.
The Tory Party, meanwhile, is riven with its own animosity — not to say rank hypocrisy — towards its erstwhile champion.
Grandee Sir Bernard Jenkin has still not denied joining a boozy mid-lockdown party to celebrate his wife’s 65th birthday.
How could such a well-known Johnson critic be impartial if he was guilty of a far more outrageous breach of Covid rules than his own leader?
And if Boris was guilty, so too was Labour leader Keir Starmer, who, for all his claims of innocence, was caught drinking beer at what looked very much like a party.
Still, none of this gets BoJo off the hook.
There may be mitigating factors surrounding Cakegate, the so-called scandal over an uneaten birthday cake where Boris was pictured with a glass in his hand.
Boris, surprisingly, is not a party animal.
Also, Downing Street, for those who have never been inside, is a jungle of corridors and crowded offices.
Non-stop bubble
During the pandemic, staff worked 18-hour days, some having to sleep in their offices to make another early start the next day.
They worked closely together in what was effectively a huge, non-stop bubble.
But what we also know is that Downing Street in the time of Covid was the scene of sometimes riotous parties.
We know suitcases of booze were ferried in, staff drank at their desks, wine was spilled on to carpets and baby Wilfred’s garden playground was wrecked.
The Committee’s conclusion that the Government was saying one thing and ordering the rest of the country to do another is not as “deranged” as Boris protests.
The rest of the country was — and is still — paying a shocking price for lockdown rules which should shame any democratic government.
It was the task of the PM to set an example in self-discipline to a country forced to live under intolerable stress and temptation.
Boris failed to meet this challenge.
So BoJo is not entirely innocent.
And nor, for all its high-minded cant about respect towards this hallowed Parliamentary organ, is Hattie Harman’s Privileges Committee.
Boris is also entitled to respect as a former PM elected by a handsome majority against huge odds.
However “economic” he might have been with the truth, he does not deserve having his political throat cut by posturing MPs.
Political spite
A ten-day suspension would have been ample to make the point while leaving him free to rebuild his political reputation.
Ninety days was a bullet to the head, an act of personal and political spite.
More to the point, it strikes indirectly at the heart of our two-party system of democracy.
This ugly squabble is an insult to millions of families struggling with the cost of living, soaring mortgages and a tide of violent crime on our streets.
The Tories are spiralling towards mass suicide.
And it is the extraordinary cult of BoJo the World King which is luring them on to the rocks.
The election-winning ex-PM is entitled to feel bitter.
But he cannot blame everyone else, however justifiably in some cases, for the civil war currently driving his party out of office.
It is, to use one of his favourite expressions again, “deranged” to think a scorched-earth feud with PM Rishi Sunak can achieve anything but disaster, not just for the Tories, but for Britain.
Indeed, the threat of non-stop internecine war against the present Prime Minister and the party Boris once led can only rebound.
Bojo and his supporters need to pull their horns in before it is too late.
If his vendetta against No 10 ends next year in a Keir Starmer-led Labour rout, Boris’s legacy will be bleak indeed.