Boris Johnson in theatrical resignation: 'Infamy, infamy...they've all got in for me'https://en.majalla.com/node/293436/politics/boris-johnson-theatrical-resignation-infamy-infamytheyve-all-got-me
Boris Johnson in theatrical resignation: 'Infamy, infamy...they've all got in for me'
Former Prime Minster Boris Johnson has announced that he is standing down as an MP following reports he misled parliament over lockdown parties at Downing Street
AP
In this Friday, June 24, 2016 file photo, Vote Leave campaigner Boris Johnson arrives for a press conference at Vote Leave headquarters in London.
Boris Johnson in theatrical resignation: 'Infamy, infamy...they've all got in for me'
Once again, Boris Johnson is big news in Britain. He’s larger than life, after all. He’s the Big Dog.
It’s well known that Johnson is a huge admirer of Winston Churchill, and there were times when he appeared to be adopting the wartime leader’s physical demeanour, a kind of dogged stoop patented by Winston for treading through blitzed streets.
Nonetheless, when his authority as prime minister was under threat, Johnson was heard to protest that he was the Führer around here. Churchill must have been spinning in his grave faster than the Hadron Collider.
So, what to make of the Führer’s ambiguous downfall?
Top political pundits, muttering curses through gritted teeth, have been summoned back from their holidays to explain what’s going on. Sky’s finest, Beth Rigby, was quick to seize the opportunity with a big quote for such a big occasion, saying the great man had gone ‘not with a whimper, but a bang.’
Some would say that was a tad risqué on her part, given Johnson’s somewhat lascivious reputation. But it was really only a confirmation that it’s the political Silly Season. Even his staunchest supporters would be unable to keep a straight face while claiming that the resignation of yesterday’s man was The End of the World.
However, I suppose it might feel that way for the pundits. Having learnt all his tricks as an overpaid journalist, Boris Johnson has kept a great many members of his old profession in business over the years, even bequeathing some of them the status of household names. Well, in my household at least.
Having learnt all his tricks as an overpaid journalist, Boris Johnson has kept a great many members of his old profession in business over the years.
Who can forget the sight of Sam Coates dragging a wheeled holdall down Whitehall in a reconstruction of the steps trodden by Number Ten's revellers?
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves his home, in London, Britain March 21, 2023.
Honours list
Okay, I admit that might just be a personal favourite. Today, though, after shaking off the memory of their beach loungers, the pundits may be forgiven for blushing a little when responding to the former prime minister's largesse:
"Two absolute gifts, Boris? An honours list to scandalise the nation and a resignation letter? You spoil us. You really shouldn't have."
"It was the least I could do!"
I shall take events in chronological order, lest the sheer speed of developments make readers giddy. The honours list, then, had been the subject of wild speculation for some time. It was rumoured to be longer than any such list in history.
Johnson was going to be dishing out knighthoods and ermine to a cast of thousands that would include his own dad and his most devoted groupie, Nadine Dorries. Even though, when it finally appeared, neither luminary was honoured, Hugh Muir in the Guardian was very miffed indeed, complaining that the list
'…redefined the very idea of honours as a reward for public service, replacing it with the sort of cheap favour you bestow on friends by buying them a seaside hat or a round in a pub.'
A seaside hat? Muir was definitely one of the journalists who'd had his holiday rudely interrupted. But the pub analogy was even odder, as most people would struggle ("It's the least I could do") to imagine Boris ever buying a round.
Muir gave the briefest mention to some members of the cast. He simply didn't have time to go into the rewards for people like Martin Reynolds, Johnson's principal private secretary, who was knighted with the Order of the Bath.
Reynolds had earned the nickname "party Marty" for various messages he sent about the parties at Number Ten, telling officials to "bring your own booze" and later adding: "We seem to have got away with it."
Britain'sPrime Minister Boris Johnson reacts while leading a virtual news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic, inside 10 Downing Street in central London on Jan. 26, 2021.
Instead, Muir decided to concentrate on the politicians who benefited from Johnson's generosity: the damehood for the widely-detested Priti Patel, the knighthood for the supine Jacob Rees-Mogg.
He blanched at the inclusion of Andrea Jenkyns, education minister at the time, recalling how, in response to a group protesting outside Downing Street, she had shown them 'her middle finger,' yet he passed over in silence her far greater offence of attempting to sing the national anthem at a conference.
Presumably, a rendition of 'There is nothing like a dame' would be too much to ask.
Muir was similarly cursory when it came to the knighting of Michael Fabricant, a valiant apologist for Johnson who, nonetheless, did everyone a service by apologising in such a way as to magnify the great man's offence.
There was no time to mention Fabricant's several wigs with which he fabricates the illusion that his hair grows over time. Still, at least he got a mention. Muir said nothing at all about the best joke, the awarding of an OBE to Johnson's hairdresser.
Political humour
A government source accused Johnson's resignation honours of "dragging the whole thing into the gutter." Apparently, some people just can't take a joke. A former cabinet minister called it "put out the trash day". As we learnt from a notorious remark made by Theresa May, putting the trash out is definitely boys' work.
The general impression is that Johnson has done for the Establishment what he used to do for Oxford restaurants. The English upper classes have always been the real anarchists.
With his tongue-in-cheek honours list, he's blown the gaff on the entire Establishment, just a few days after the self-styled 'spare' (Prince Harry) denounced the government and its relationship with the press. These are strange times, with the old ways being trashed by two very different old Etonians.
With Johnson's tongue-in-cheek honours list, he's blown the gaff on the entire Establishment, just a few days after the self-styled 'spare' (Prince Harry) denounced the government and its relationship with the press.
As with most humour in politics, the list leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but that is nothing compared to the acid reflux of Johnson's resignation letter.
At the end of his premiership, and in typically lofty World King style, Johnson famously declared "Hasta la vista, baby!" The joke was itself a minor offence against parliamentary protocol, as he was effectively addressing the Speaker as 'baby' when he said it.
Now, in his indignant denunciation of the Privileges Committee that has precipitated his downfall, he admits 'it is very sad to be leaving parliament – at least for now'.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during his first cabinet meeting since the general election, inside 10 Downing Street in London, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019.
Naturally, the 'for now' has led to feverish speculation about the return he might be plotting. Was this the reason that his erstwhile groupie chose that same day to step down from her own constituency? Was the most recrudescent politician of the age planning a Trumpian comeback?
Certainly, the victimised tone of the resignation letter, and the way he has borrowed the 'witch-hunt' phrase from the former president, suggest a readiness to wait out the last year of the present administration and, after its widely predicted trouncing at the General Election, resurrect the party as its leader, thus restoring its 'mojo'.
It's mojo, note. The word bears an uncanny similarity to the nickname 'Bo-Jo' the tabloids anointed him with.
Witch-hunt trope
The witch-hunt trope may have some currency across the pond. It may even work in Fife, where a mural depicting a witch has recently been removed as too, well, wicked-looking. But if there is a wicked witch involved here, Johnson implies that her name is Harriet 'Harperson' Harman, the Labour MP chairing the committee which concluded he misled parliament over 'gatherings' during the lockdown.
Ignore the inconvenient fact that fellow Tories make up the majority on this committee and that the chair doesn't get a vote unless there's a tie. Unsurprisingly, Harman is the one who appals and bewilders the ex-PM most.
Egregious, he calls her. Biased. I was the best communicator the party ever had, the winner of a famous electoral victory, the roller outer of vaccines, and the getter done of Brexit. I could have been a contender.
What was it Wilde said about the death of Little Nell?
When the author of 'The Wit and Wisdom of Boris Johnson' spoke of the man's tragic flaw, he may have been trying to outdo the sarcasm of his own book title. In truth, though, there's always been (at best) an air or tragi-comedy about Bo-Jo.
Even at his moment of utter defeat, the carnival king couldn't quite pull off the tone of towering stateman brought down by vindictive political pygmies.
Instead, like Kenneth Williams in the role of Julius Caesar, at the very instant the conspirators' knives were plunged deep into his blameless flesh, Johnson cried "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!"
