The prime minister’s destructive experiment in clowning has torn up the normal rulebook and turned politics into a farce
Had Boris Johnson’s dramatic disgrace occurred in a normal world, it would have pushed the expectation of a general election back a bit, perhaps to the last possible moment in 2024. The prime minister has finally agreed to resign – ludicrously, he wants to stay in post until the autumn, as ex-ministers beg him to leave (it’s possible he only said this because humiliating climbdowns are perversely his happy place). Any new Conservative leader would want to put some blue water between themselves and Johnson and carve out a space in the nation’s psyche. Hell, if they were really old-school, they’d want to put together a political programme of their own ideas, hammered into household use through sheer repetition.
That previously modest road map is a fantasy. There is no possible blue water between anyone and Johnson, who won’t sink until everyone’s lapels are splashed in his carnage. It’s hard to imagine the Tory leader with any personalities or philosophies left to try on and harder still to think of the party united enough that it could devise a long-range strategy.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
