The PM’s behaviour this week was a reminder he will do and say anything to cling to power – no matter the cost to Britain
That sound you can hear is the whirr of 650 adding machines. At Westminster, MPs are totting up the costs, tallying the benefits and working out the balance of their own interests. On the Tory benches, they know a moment of decision is coming but they can’t be sure that moment is now. Does the resignation in disgust by one of Boris Johnson’s most loyal lieutenants signal the end times, or was Munira Mirza a backroom aide no voter had ever heard of? What if both things are true?
They think, chiefly, about their own seats. Their inboxes are bulging with constituents’ fury, but they hesitate before casting aside the winner of their biggest election victory for more than 30 years. Some long for the dilemma to be resolved for them, perhaps by a development so dramatic – police action or the emergence of a damning photograph, or if an unexpurgated Sue Gray report turns out to be full of what one ex-minister calls “tawdry detail” – that a consensus will rapidly form that the Johnson show is over. The bandwagon will start rolling and they’ll be able to jump on it safely. But what if there is no such moment of clarity?
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
