Cast your mind back to those hazy, pre-referendum days, when all we had to worry about was whether or not our Prime Minister had put his penis in a dead pig's mouth. They were innocent, pre-lapsarian days, and on one of them, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson sat at a great desk, dappled with the late spring sunshine and wrote two essays.
Utilising all of his famed powers of rhetoric, and employing his considerable gifts for applying the lessons of the Classics to a modern milieu, this acolyte of Pericles, the great soldier-statesman, applied his vast intellect to the problem of Leave vs Remain. Long, long into the night he wrote, evaluating each case forensically, weighing the pros and cons of each outcome, projecting their ramifications and repercussions down the ages before finally deciding, with a heavy heart, that the case for Leave was unanswerable, and he must go against his great friend for the good of the nation. It was a tragedy which was pleasingly Greek in its scope, childhood friends torn asunder. So it was that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson became the poster boy for Leave, the die was cast, the stage was set. The rest is history.
Or, or, and this is the sad bit, Boz decided that Leave was going to lose, but if he stuck his oar in, he'd at least have the euro-headbangers on side next time he made a tilt at the leadership, the membership would love him and he wouldn't have his fingerprints all over the absolute king-sized disaster that Brexit would undoubtedly be.
It came as a nasty fucking shock to him when Leave won, I can tell you.
All of a sudden, things got very real for Boris, he tried to duck out of it, making such an absolute Horlicks of Foreign Secretary that he was bound to get kicked into the outer darkness. No such luck. Theresa kept him on so there was at least one person in cabinet who made her look good. Eventually, out of options, he quit. He'd always known that Brexit would be an unmitigated disaster, but when she actually came back with a deal it got too much. It was actually happening. With the inevitability of a glacier melting as the climate changes, Theresa May failed, and with equal inevitability, with the grim certainty of a tide advancing on someone marooned on a mud flat, Boz had to take the top job. He really didn't have any other option, and, to be fair, there was still a little bit of his entitled Eton soul which thought: it'll be all right, everything else has come up roses so far, why not this?
Well, we all know what happened next. The slow-motion car-crash that is the Johnson administration has added greatly to the gaiety of nations over the last week (as I type this, his brother's just quit, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one vote is unfortunate, to lose all the votes ever and your brother into the bargain means you're an incompetent fucktrumpet). It is, aptly, Classic in its tragic scope, the schemer schemes his whole life only, when the goal is achieved, to discover that he's absolutely fucking terrible at it. Hubris, thy name is Al.
But it could all have been so different. Imagine a world in which he'd played the long game and plumped for Remain. Rather than try to cause as much chaos in the Tory party as possible and thrust himself forward in the ensuing mess, Boris lends his charisma to the campaign to remain in the EU. Sensing which way the wind was blowing Gove decides to wind his neck in, Cummings is never hired, there's no message on the side of a bus, only the nutjobs campaign for Leave, Remain wins at a reasonable canter. What then for Boris?
What indeed? Well, call-me-Dave Cameron was never likely to hang around for long, his long-term plan was always to chillax in a shed with some artisanal cheese made by that bloke out of Blur, fucking the country up merely accelerated the process. A Remain win and Cameron sees his term out, the economy rallies, the Tories manage to outflank Labour on spending, bringing austerity to an end just in time for the 2020 election, Cambo was never going to stand, there's an orderly transition, Boris takes the leadership and wins with an absolutely thumping majority. It's plausible, even with the worst, most incompetent series of administrations in living memory, Labour still trail. A semi-competent Tory performance post remain would have neutered the Lib Dems and marginalised Labour. Boris would have been the Prime Minister he always wanted to be.
Instead he's got this shitshow on his hands, all because he was too hungry for the top job. Turns out he didn't study his Classics as well as he thought, Pericles picked a fight with Sparta which ultimately destroyed Athens, the parallels shouldn't be lost on him.
Utilising all of his famed powers of rhetoric, and employing his considerable gifts for applying the lessons of the Classics to a modern milieu, this acolyte of Pericles, the great soldier-statesman, applied his vast intellect to the problem of Leave vs Remain. Long, long into the night he wrote, evaluating each case forensically, weighing the pros and cons of each outcome, projecting their ramifications and repercussions down the ages before finally deciding, with a heavy heart, that the case for Leave was unanswerable, and he must go against his great friend for the good of the nation. It was a tragedy which was pleasingly Greek in its scope, childhood friends torn asunder. So it was that Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson became the poster boy for Leave, the die was cast, the stage was set. The rest is history.
Or, or, and this is the sad bit, Boz decided that Leave was going to lose, but if he stuck his oar in, he'd at least have the euro-headbangers on side next time he made a tilt at the leadership, the membership would love him and he wouldn't have his fingerprints all over the absolute king-sized disaster that Brexit would undoubtedly be.
It came as a nasty fucking shock to him when Leave won, I can tell you.
All of a sudden, things got very real for Boris, he tried to duck out of it, making such an absolute Horlicks of Foreign Secretary that he was bound to get kicked into the outer darkness. No such luck. Theresa kept him on so there was at least one person in cabinet who made her look good. Eventually, out of options, he quit. He'd always known that Brexit would be an unmitigated disaster, but when she actually came back with a deal it got too much. It was actually happening. With the inevitability of a glacier melting as the climate changes, Theresa May failed, and with equal inevitability, with the grim certainty of a tide advancing on someone marooned on a mud flat, Boz had to take the top job. He really didn't have any other option, and, to be fair, there was still a little bit of his entitled Eton soul which thought: it'll be all right, everything else has come up roses so far, why not this?
Well, we all know what happened next. The slow-motion car-crash that is the Johnson administration has added greatly to the gaiety of nations over the last week (as I type this, his brother's just quit, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one vote is unfortunate, to lose all the votes ever and your brother into the bargain means you're an incompetent fucktrumpet). It is, aptly, Classic in its tragic scope, the schemer schemes his whole life only, when the goal is achieved, to discover that he's absolutely fucking terrible at it. Hubris, thy name is Al.
But it could all have been so different. Imagine a world in which he'd played the long game and plumped for Remain. Rather than try to cause as much chaos in the Tory party as possible and thrust himself forward in the ensuing mess, Boris lends his charisma to the campaign to remain in the EU. Sensing which way the wind was blowing Gove decides to wind his neck in, Cummings is never hired, there's no message on the side of a bus, only the nutjobs campaign for Leave, Remain wins at a reasonable canter. What then for Boris?
What indeed? Well, call-me-Dave Cameron was never likely to hang around for long, his long-term plan was always to chillax in a shed with some artisanal cheese made by that bloke out of Blur, fucking the country up merely accelerated the process. A Remain win and Cameron sees his term out, the economy rallies, the Tories manage to outflank Labour on spending, bringing austerity to an end just in time for the 2020 election, Cambo was never going to stand, there's an orderly transition, Boris takes the leadership and wins with an absolutely thumping majority. It's plausible, even with the worst, most incompetent series of administrations in living memory, Labour still trail. A semi-competent Tory performance post remain would have neutered the Lib Dems and marginalised Labour. Boris would have been the Prime Minister he always wanted to be.
Instead he's got this shitshow on his hands, all because he was too hungry for the top job. Turns out he didn't study his Classics as well as he thought, Pericles picked a fight with Sparta which ultimately destroyed Athens, the parallels shouldn't be lost on him.
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