23 March 2023 , 20:51
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It's over. The Boris Era is finito.
He and his dwindling band of swivel-eyed followers refuse to believe it, but the rest of us know it.
And thank God for that. Great Leader politics have landed the country in a post-Brexit mess: divided, spiteful and mistrustful of those in public life.
Johnson fancied himself as a man of destiny, called to lead the nation in a time of crisis like Winston Churchill. And for a time, people fell for the tempting illusion.
His trial at the hands of fellow MPs confirms he is only a Great Gasbag, seething with rage against the world about him and unfit for any kind of public office.
Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
Boris Johnson: a lying politician who thinks he is above the rules (PRU/AFP via Getty Images)That truth has finally dawned on his shrinking coterie of sycophants at Westminster, where only a dozen Tory MPs followed him into the lobbies to reject his own government’s Windsor Framework for solving the Irish protocol crisis.
It goes wider. Tory peer Lord Finkelstein puts it well, arguing that Boris “has lost the crowd” of voters.
If I sense the mood correctly, people are fed up with this great leader business. Look where it got us: led by a lying politician who thinks he is above the rules he makes for the rest of us.
This could well be a watershed moment, like 1979 and
, when the country shifts decisively, and on this occasion from showmanship towards a lower-profile but more competent government.
It has Keir Starmer’s name on it.
Meanwhile, we have a date with history in six weeks time: local elections on May 4, when we can finish the job started by MPs – and Get Boris Done!