BoJo – the schizophrenic conservative

Boris Johnson has resigned as Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Boris was a great friend of Australia who even spent some time living here and always admired Tony Abbott’s ‘stop the boats’ policy, but it seems that he has ironically succumbed to the Aussie disease of decapitating Prime Ministers.

But why, really, has Johnson resigned?

Because some 50 of his colleagues, including two of his key ministers, have had enough of BoJo’s obfuscations, his slipperiness with the truth, and his constant evasiveness of responsibility and accountability.

The immediate reason for their resignations will soon be forgotten; this saga about some character with the unfortunately Pythonesque name of Pincher who groped some gay guys at a gentlemen’s club – and Boris knew about it, but said he didn’t.

The British political and upper classes have always had their sex scandals and by itself, Boris would probably have survived. But over the last couple of years Boris has squandered the goodwill that saw him win a landslide only a few years ago, the so-called ‘red wall election’ where traditional Labour seats all turned to the Tories because Boris – they knew – would deliver Brexit.

Which he did.

But since then (perhaps because of his new wife, an avowed greenie), Boris went from being a fiercely independent pro-British leader to a globalist indistinguishable from the very leaders of the European Union that Britain had escaped from.

The new Boris Johnson was uninterested in stopping the boats and was instead busily rushing around committing Britain to Net Zero and cosying up with the COP 26 UN IPCC climate lobby. Britain, having achieved Brexit, swapped being subservient to the EU to being subservient to the UN and the IPCC. And I have no doubt that as energy prices have soared Boris has gone in many people’s minds from hero to villain.

Suddenly the bumbling buffoonery didn’t look quite so genuine. Remember, Boris made his early career as an editor of The Spectator opposing Climate Change madness.

Worse, of course, was Covid.

Boris began by being sceptical about the need to lockdown, but after catching the disease himself he became an impassioned lockdown leader – ‘save the NHS’ was his new slogan, referring to the UK’s creaky old socialist national health surface. We saw this bizarre messianic style lockdown on our TV screens, with Brits lining the streets applauding medical staff as if they were some returning victorious army. Again, it’s hard not to think that this endless swapping of convictions and beliefs can’t have severely tarnished his image.

The question is what comes next? Or more importantly who?

Boris Johnson was the schizophrenic conservative. Great on some issues, hopeless on others. But at least he pretended to be conservative. The fear is that he will be replaced by a wet, bureaucratic leftie in conservative clothing.

That would be a truly tragic legacy.

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