The party will be unable to force its next choice of leader on to a country in dire need of a general election
Like a dog that could not be sorrier for chewing the sofa, it was a contrite prime minister who prostrated himself before parliament this week. Dogs are never truly sorry, of course. They have learned that if they whimper, hang their heads and look pathetic when caught, they can defuse their owners’ anger. But they don’t actually feel sorry, because dogs don’t think like that. They just want the shouting to stop.
In Boris Johnson’s case, the ever-so-humble act certainly doesn’t seem to have lasted long. When he toured the tearooms afterwards, taking the temperature of his party, he reportedly horrified some MPs by insisting that he hadn’t actually done anything wrong and was merely taking the rap for someone else: some other prime minister, presumably, who had stood in the middle of a crowd chugging wine on his lawn and now claimed not to have realised that was a party.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
