Actually before sharing my comments let me offer two recommendations. First, at risk of breaching copyright but in genuine admiration, I couldn’t have summed up the broader situation better than did the excellent Martyn Turner in this morning’s Irish Times:
I also recommend the column in today’s (British) Times by Iain Martin, stating, correctly, that “Boris Johnson sees truth as a silly detail for lesser mortals”.
Finally, here is my piece for La Stampa on the political demise of this serial killer of truth, decency and integrity:
It is almost enough to restore one’s faith in British Parliamentary democracy. The fact that the committee responsible for enforcing Parliamentary rules and good conduct, on which his own Conservative Party holds a majority, has concluded that Boris Johnson repeatedly lied to the House of Commons while he was Prime Minister in 2019-22, shows that there really are some noble MPs who believe in truth, integrity and the rule of law. If this were a football game, the score so far would be Parliament 10, Boris 0.
The game is not entirely over. Next week, the whole of the House of Commons must vote to approve or reject the committee’s findings. Yet since all the opposition parties will vote to support the committee, the only interesting question will be how split the governing Conservative Party will prove to be.
Most likely, it will be quite badly split but Johnson will lose and the government of his successor-but-one, Rishi Sunak, will survive. The principles of legality and proper Parliamentary conduct will be upheld.
In this fight over the future of the first British political leader ever to have succeeded in creating a Berlusconi-style personality cult, the supporters of Johnson have shown a continued, rather shocking willingness to damage their own party and to undermine Parliament in order to protect their hero. But those supporters and that personality cult are too weak to prevail.
One outcome is certain, but another consequence is overwhelmingly probable. The certain outcome is that Johnson and his supporters will continue to claim he has been a victim not a perpetrator, will never admit he has been at fault, and will never apologise. In this respect, Boris and his gang will follow the Berlusconi-Trump playbook.
Yet the probable consequence is that Johnson’s political career is nonetheless over. He has chosen to resign as an MP in order to avoid being rejected by voters, and will not succeed in finding a pathway back. In opinion polls, a clear majority among voters say they do not want him to return to Parliament.
To foreigners, the affair may seem a little strange. The Parliamentary Committee has found Johnson guilty of lying to Parliament about whether during the COVID pandemic he and his staff at Number Ten Downing Street held parties that broke the rules they themselves had set for the rest of the country. Telling lies about parties might seem a bit trivial. Doing so never troubled the conscience of il Cavaliere, after all.
The reality however is that at the time this rule-breaking felt very serious. Even Queen Elizabeth II was unable, thanks to the lockdown rules, to hold a proper funeral for her husband on the eve of which, notoriously, a wild party was held in Number Ten.
It is possible to see this as the Al Capone principle being applied to Boris Johnson. Just as in 1931 the Chicago gangster was convicted only of tax evasion because that was the one crime prosecutors could pin on him, so Johnson has been forced to leave Parliament over lying about parties, because that is the one example of dishonesty that could be pinned on him. This, however, would be to miss the wider truth: that Johnson has long since forfeited all trust, both within his Conservative Party and with the British public as a whole.
Silvio Berlusconi, of course, teaches us that a populist who suffers no shame and is an effective political campaigner can have many comebacks. That is what Donald Trump is attempting, too. Johnson is certainly shameless, tells better jokes than Trump, and will always think his campaigning skills give him a potential future.
Johnson’s first problem is that he lacks two of Berlusconi’s other advantages: great wealth and his own TV channels. His second problem is that, like Berlusconi, his record in government was poor. He is known, both inside his party and among voters, to have been chaotic and incompetent. His third problem is that in the bi-polar British electoral system, following 13 years of Conservative government the country is very likely now to see quite a long period of government by the Labour Party once the general election is held next year.
That might provide time for Johnson’s lies to be forgotten. More likely, this will provide time for a new generation of Conservative politicians to come to the fore. Boris Johnson had his chance and he threw it away through his dishonesty and incompetence, and through his denigration of his own party and of Parliament.
Italy has just shown a remarkable and, this foreigner would say, a rather unjustified willingness to forgive Silvio Berlusconi. Britons are less tolerant of liars and sinners. At least, I hope they are.
Thank you for excellent article. Your last sentence reminds me of the old saying "Never listen to anything before the 'but'".