Boris Johnson may yet survive, but each self-inflicted disaster leaves Starmer in a stronger position
“Beginning of the end for Boris?” The strapline across the front of his own Daily Telegraph answers its own question. His end was always contained in his beginning: his fatal flaws were always destined to destroy him. The questions are when, and how? Can he prolong the inevitable and defy gravity yet again?
He was not elected for his gravity. Quite the opposite, pollsters say: he was elected as the party man to lift the country’s spirits, so it is little surprise that he and his wife run a party house with showstopping £850-a-roll gold wallpaper. New babies are part of the fun: how many – seven or eight, who cares? There is a lobe in voters’ brains that likes to vote for fun: whose gang would you choose, whose party would you go to, who would you drink with in the pub? David Cameron and his gang had it: those pictures with Samantha on holiday in Cornwall, their glamorous aristocratic circle, chillaxing with video games and country suppers – and yes, let’s face it, the sheen of Eton. Why else would we elect 20 Old Etonian prime ministers? Miserable Theresa May had not a drop of fun, and plummeted. Boris Johnson has it in spades, but how much is too much?
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
