Chris Floyd: The Last Days of Boris Johnson / The New Statesman

Strong portrait of Boris Johnson by Chris Floyd in the new issue of The New Statesman accompanying an article written by Andrew Marr.

“Politics is not a game played in a few streets of central London, or parlayed across Westminster coffee tables. When it goes badly wrong, everyone is rocked. Power isn’t the private property of any individual, no matter how ruthless they are, no matter how well they tell jokes, no matter how many billionaires and newspaper proprietors they have cosied up to.

The Johnson seizure of Conservative England does, in the end, feel like a story out of Ancient Rome, something fundamentally un-British. Now it is very close to its end. Millions will be thoroughly delighted. But what is coming next? Something is. And it could be, simply, mayhem. Perhaps a cabal of senior Tories is even now able to concoct an alternative post-Johnson government able to stagger on through the tough year ahead. But don’t bet on it. We deserve a general election. But don’t expect that either.”