Snarls and smears from disgraced Boris Johnson, readying his troops for civil war

Ninety days’ suspension and a lifelong ban from a pass to enter the Palace of Westminster. This is the punishing verdict for the only prime minister ever found to have misled parliament. Naturally, Boris Johnson lashes out at the privileges committee judgment as a “final knife-thrust in a protracted political assassination”, designed “to find me guilty, regardless of the facts”. All the committee’s painstakingly careful yet eye-popping evidence bounces off him, as he treats the detailed accounts of six (plus another 16) Downing Street parties, and the lies he told, with total contempt. Furious self-pity, paranoid victimhood and faith in his golden merit is true to form.

This verdict should be the stake through the heart of a disgraced career. Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell already produced enough devastating evidence in the biography Johnson at 10 to prevent any conceivable resurrection of this monster, you would think. At a literary event this week, Seldon signed my copy with: “A story about the worst prime minister in (modern) history – rotten to the core.”

The hypothetical punishment was multiplied for his complicity in a “campaign of abuse” against the committee, which he derided as a kangaroo court. His smears today were expected, claiming the findings that he deliberately misled the house were “rubbish”, and “a lie”, calling it a “deranged conclusion”. He said some of the committee’s arguments were “a load of complete tripe, and that “this report is a charade”. But don’t imagine these are the final ravings of a desperate man as he sinks into a hell of his own making. No, there is nothing reckless or uncalculated about this Trumpian tactic. He does not for one moment expect to convince the likes of you and me, or any half-rational observers, but to give ammunition and hope to his little platoons of supporters, about two dozen in parliament and many more among the Tory membership, who might, just possibly, get some future chance to select him again as their leader.

There is nothing wild about Johnson’s flamboyant rejection of criticism, as it gives his many foghorns in the media a supply of ammunition to keep the Brexit fires burning, saluting their hero as the prince over the water. This is civil war. Their enemy is Rishi Sunak, the usurper in Downing Street, who even now is wrongfully enjoying Johnson’s gold wallpaper. The remainers, lefties, wokerati and metropolitan elite are now forgotten enemies for Johnson and his platoons, who focus all their fire on their own frontbench.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/15/snarls-smears-disgraced-boris-johnson-partygate-civil-war

Sound familiar?