Writing in this morning’s Telegraph, Allister Heath encapsulates the feelings of anger and betrayal at recent developments in Downing Street.
[Boris Johnson] claimed to have believed that a party billed – in an email he says he didn’t see – as “socially distanced drinks”, with invitees urged to “bring your own booze”, was actually a “work event”, and that he stayed there for 25 minutes, still not realising anything was wrong. That kind of contrived admission might be legalistically clever but is politically calamitous for a prime minister. The Tory party is incandescent at the way Johnson has thrown his vast majority away, and rightly so.
For many, however, the breach over Covid restrictions is merely the final straw, the charge-sheet against the Prime Minister extending way beyond an illicit party in the garden of Number 10. From tax-hikes and the cost of living to illegal immigration and the culture wars he appears to have broken every pledge and reneged on every promise he made with those who put him into power in the first place.
“Boris was put in power to confront the elites but he did nothing of the sort. His voters are seething at his broken promises, his massive tax increases, his inability to gain control of the borders, his failure to tackle crime, his apparent unwillingness to leverage Brexit to truly change Britain, his lack of interest in economics, entrepreneurship and the cost of living, and his failure to prevent the woke revolutionaries from taking over every British institution and workplace.
Covid, paradoxically, bought Johnson time and temporary popularity, by concealing the weakness of his agenda. With the pandemic ending, there is nowhere left for him to hide.
The premise and promise of Boris Johnson was that he was the only mainstream politician with the desire to put the Left-wing experts back in their place and realign the machinery of state with public opinion. He would channel the inchoate fury of populism into a workable plan for radical change, and force a “dewokified”, reprogrammed establishment to work for, rather than against, the culturally conservative majority.”
Instead he’s proved to be the figurehead of the very establishment he was voted in to abolish.
For many, the end cannot come soon enough:
“Truss, Sunak or whoever comes next must harness the angry anti-establishment mood of centre-Right voters or be swept away by a Labour Party promising, however implausibly, that it is “time for change”. The next leader will need to make good on the promise of Brexit, not merely on its legalities.
They cannot keep going with Johnson’s idiotic war on his own supporters, his green fundamentalism, profligate extravagance and gimmicky levelling-up that will achieve nothing but waste billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.”
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
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