Despite 41% of his MPs voting against him, the prime minister has vowed to continue
They will get their comeuppance, those 211 cowardly MPs, crawlers and placemen who clung to their grotesquely unfit leader. The public’s mind is made up.
But the incorrigible one bashes on, bashing anything that gets in his way. “Getting on with the job” means grasping anything to appease Boris Johnson’s wildly divergent rebels, ranging from off-the-scale rightwingers like Steve Baker to upright constitutionalists such as Jesse Norman, shocked by Rwanda expulsions, Northern Ireland protocol treaty-breaking and a denuded ministerial code. This week Johnson will promise a 70% bribe to housing association tenants, selling off remaining social housing. Yesterday he wooed MPs with imminent tax cuts, never mind our derelict public services.
Survive? He’ll be on the run from booing from now on, never daring to meet un-vetted voters for fear someone tells him of a mother dying alone while he lied about partying and puking inside No 10. “I’d do it again”, the “humbled” one told MPs last night.
The Mail’s splash today features a red button, warning “148 Tory MPs hit the self-destruct button by opening the door to smirking Starmer’s coalition of chaos: Lib Dem, Labour, SNP.” Starmer doesn’t smirk, he’s too uptight. But yes, of course this is Labour’s ideal result – a directionless, despised PM clinging on, shamed and lamed, wildly zigzagging all over the place.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
