'The show is over for Boris Johnson, and the country is shifting, like in 1997'

23 March 2023 , 20:51

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Boris Johnson has lost the crowd (Image: AFP via Getty Images)

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.

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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!

Paul Routledge