Starmer’s tough line on Brexit made Johnson expendable to Leavers
For some reason, the last days of Boris Johnson’s leadership of the Conservative party reminded me of the last days of Nero. That self-serving, delusional speech outside No 10 evoked echoes of Suetonius’s version of the dying words attributed to Nero: “Qualis artifex pereo” – What an artist dies in me.
So much done! Brexit Unchained! So much more to be achieved … (Sorry. Sarcasm is dangerous.)
The purpose of the defenestration of Johnson for hardline Brexiters was given away by the attorney general, Suella Braverman. She admitted on the BBC’s Today programme that from her point of view Johnson’s political assassination had been all about Brexit. Brexit? Yes: Brexiters like her, fearing – irony of ironies – that the man who “got Brexit done” was not a true believer in a hard Brexit, this having been the stated reason of the former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost for resigning earlier from the Johnson government. Truth? Morality? Lawbreaking? Our international standing? Not the big issue for hard Brexiters.
It had been suggested to me earlier in the week that the reason why the rightwing Brexiters were now going for Johnson was that they felt their objective had been secured. When Keir Starmer shocked former Remainers, and now Rejoiners, like your correspondent, by ruling out any intention of rejoining the European Union and even the single market, then for the Conservative Brexiters Johnson had served his purpose, and could go. Labour would not wreck the project. The problem was that, for them, Johnson was not purposeful enough.
To hard Brexiters, who had been yearning for years for a low-tax, low-spending, minimum-regulation economy, Johnson’s “spendthrift” approach was all wrong. Interestingly enough, it appears also to have
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