And what costume shall the poor girl wear
To all tomorrow’s parties
For Thursday’s child is Sunday’s clown
For whom none will go mourning
— Turns out, “Nico” and “Nazi” slant rhyme for a reason
And speaking of people history should/must/please gods do treat unkindly, Boris Johnson looks to lose his U.K.1 as early as Sunday morning over partying all the time. Fur realz, as the hep cats say, Andrew W.K. has nothing on BoJo when it comes to throwing down. Johnson suffers not a drinking problem, but a drinks partying problem.
And the no confidence vote knives have left their sheaths. But why over this? After all, Boris Johnson made his bones violating every journalistic ethic ever conceived. He fathered an Avogadro’s number of children out of wedlock with innumerable femme fatales while spouting the British version of American family values. His entire platform whilst2 mayor of London, championing Brexit and rising through the ranks of Tory leadership amounted to “I may have no competencies, act a buffoon, lack charm, know no tact, and display zero applicable intelligence or ability to learn from grievous errors, but I can quote Shakespeare and hurt immigrants and minorities.” He failed upward his entire life until a gin rickey ratcheted up the pressure to resign or face redundancy.
So, why will toping with tosspots at 10 Downing Street topple this twit? Your teetotaling Weekend Politics Thread reckons on four related reasons. To wit:3
Only Monarchs Get Away With Acting Monarchical
Like all right-leaning spiring autocrats, Johnson considers himself a king. He makes rules for others to follow. Accountability, if accounted at all, comes only between himself and his deity.
While Britons and a surprising number of other European populaces attune themselves with this attitude, they only accord divine right to blooded royals (and sometimes, not always, to commoner spouses of royals). Noblesse oblige goes a long way in buying this grudging tolerance. Princes do military service. Princesses teach public school. A network of king- and queen-sponsored charities plug gaps in public sector programs.
Johnson never did nothing to help no one at no time. So, when the pitchforked mob came knocking, nary a kindly miller felt moved to offer sanctuary.
Everybody Realized Sort of All at Once That Johnson Cannot Tell the Truth
Politicians prevaricate. Johnson never does anything but. His story on the drinks parties has gone from “never happened” to “I did not know,” and then from “I knew without attending” to “no one considers cocktails in the garden with friends a ‘party.’”
The miasma of mendacity spreads even further. To quote from an analysis of the drinks party scandal published by Euro Politico, “Some Whitehall insiders fear Johnson — who began his career fabricating newspaper quotes and was previously sacked from a frontbench role for lying about an affair — is having a corrosive effect on the whole machine.”
Johnson lies so much that not even the senior civil servants who actually run the workaday United Kingdom know what to believe and, thereby, do. When the whole of government operates in a web of unreality, the fabricator of the potentially fatal fictions must fall.
The latest sure-to-fail gambit, dubbed “Operation Save Big Dog,” amounts to firing ministers until people discontinue calls for Johnson’s head.4 Call this the Peacemaker Ploy—killing as many men, women and children as it takes to achieve peace.
Johnson Broke Rules Pretty Much Everyone Else Willingly Followed
Serving as an avatar for getting away with antisocial behavior and giving people permission to act as their worst selves keyed Johnson’s rise to the prime ministership. But he has now found the precise degree to which fucking around results in finding out, courtesy of the majority of UK voting population.
The residents of the British Isles may not have like locking down, masking up, laying off from the local and watching Queen Elizabeth mourn Prince Phillip while seated in a pew 100 feet from another living soul. But they did. Upper lips stiffened, they calmly carried on in quiet desperation.
Compare that to the piña coladas on the patio picture above. Then make that comparison at least four times over — once while Liz literally mourned Phil alone.
Even the few folks willing until now to fulfill Johnson’s fantasy of treating him as Jesus’s Son cannot bring themselves to issue a pass for pissing on the propriety of properness that constitutes the energizing ethos of Englishness.
Gotta Eat Your Own for Something
Brexit turned into the boondoggle predicted. The pandemic will not abate. No one ever liked Johnson to begin with. The real brains behind the Conservatives’ takeover of the U.K. only ever viewed Johnson as a tool akin to the Allen wrench that comes with an Ikea bookcase. Does anyone hold onto those once required assembly ceases?
Viewed in light of the four factors outlined, Johnson’s fall does not meet the standards of a murder mystery. One could almost empathize5 with Johnson. But cackling at his comeuppance and remembering that the traditional definition of tragedy involves calling down ruin upon your own self strikes Uvular as the more satisfying option. Who else deserves cosmic payback? Tell us in the comments.