Back Story Newsletter
Good morning,
Britain’s Boris Johnson
The fumbling, bumbling, partying, lying Prime Minister of Britain is refusing to exit the building as the political floor caves in and the walls are crumbling.
It doesn’t paint a picture of Boris Johnson the brave, but Boris the dishonourable. Willing to drag himself and his party into the mud all in the name of grasping at power to the last second.
And that last gasp while painful, is coming, and reshuffling his cabinet won’t do anything but once again delay the inevitable. Boris is a deadman walking.
What’s all the fuss about? Well it’s an incredibly long story that centres on his lying to the public and always refusing to accept responsibility for the scandals and mismanagement that has plagued, in fact defined his time at Number 10 Downing street.
In fact inside that residence Johnson threw drinking party’s during the Covid lockdowns which he later denied, was then investigated for, and found to be guilty of a criminal offense.
He is still under investigation for lying about it to Parliament which is an ongoing story.
But that pales in comparison to this latest earth quake that has rattled Britain’s Conservative party.
Last week, Chris Pincher resigned as the party’s deputy chief whip after admitting having been drunk at a private members’ club in London where, it was alleged, he groped two men. He was suspended from the party but he has not resigned as a member of Parliament.
Pincher was promoted by Johnson, who as we now know was investigated in 2019 on similar accusations, and that Johnson after first denying it, was directly involved in that case.
The fact Johnson promoted Pincher who appears to be a serial sex offender, and that he tried to deny knowledge of past behaviour is a scandal that even his own Cabinet can’t ignore.
The Government has been rocked by the resignations of two senior ministers, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the health secretary, Sajid Javid.
There are now calls to change the rules in the Conservative party to allow a new vote to oust Johnson. Rules have to be changed because there was just a non confidence vote in Johnson’s Government last month, which he barely survived.
Living here in the UK, I can’t begin to tell you how each week we witness a new scandal in Johnson’s badly run Government which barely ends before another political car crash occurs.
And this is at a time when the economy is reeling from record high inflation, and the country is hobbled by striking workers. People are exhausted by the revolving door of transgressions in Johnson’s rule.
Johnson is Britain’s Donald Trump, who lies and denies and is then found out. In Parliament his rep was literally laughed at yesterday when he offered the explanation the P.M. has forgotten about the 2019 incident with Pincher.
Johnson has again refused to step aside, in the wake of this affair appointing a new Chancellor and politically barricading himself in the Prime Minister’s office.
The newspaper headlines are screaming for him to leave today.
-The Times: “Johnson on the Brink”
-Daily Mail: “Can even Boris the greased piglet wriggle out of this”?
-Telegraph: “Johnson hanging by a thread”
-Metro: “Going, Going Gone”?
All this of course matters to British voters, but to Europe as well as Britain has been key in support of Ukraine in its war with Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin.
The coming weeks will be dramatic political theatre playing out in the UK, and we all shall watch with tired eyes, as Boris Johnson refuses to do the honourable thing and step aside so the country can get on with real challenges.
The one thing about Johnson you can count on, another scandal is likely waiting just around the corner even while this one is still playing itself out.
Dana Lewis