The Sadness of Boris Johnson

Very few are shedding tears at the political demise of Boris Johnson.  But I almost could.

Please don’t get me wrong.  I am among those who consider him an infuriating figure who needed to go.  But I still so wish he had not been such an utter fool that he needed to go.

I should be careful about calling anyone a fool.  For when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, I thought there was a very real possibility of him being a great PM.  I certainly expected him to be the greatest Prime Minister since Thatcher. Yes, I admit it. I was impressed by his Mayorship of London.  I was impressed by his boldness in helping lead the U. K. out of the E. U.  He had excellent communication skills marked by an infectious optimism.  And when he won a historic majority in the House of Commons in 2019, he was on his way.  Surely he was.

Yet very soon he was frittering it all away.  His first and greatest mistake was persisting with COVID lockdown policies beyond mid-summer 2020.  By then, it didn’t take a scientist to see lockdowns did not work and were probably doing more harm than good.  Yet that alone would not have brought him down.  The British are far more tolerant of restrictions on freedom for perceived good reasons than us rebellious Americans are.

(I’m not being critical of my British friends; just stating a pond difference.  By the way, I was in Oxford for the Fourth of July and took great delight in reminding my English friends of that special day.  They were so appreciative.)

Yet the seeds of Johnson’s demise were in his lockdown policies.  With his lockdowns, as well as his vaccination program, he asked a tremendous deal of trust from the British people, and as a whole he received it.  And that put him in a perilous position.  When one asks for and receives a great of trust at great personal costs, it is all the more important that one be trustworthy.  To instead violate that trust is asking for a greater anger and rejection.

That is why Partygate was a disaster for Boris.  Many outside the U. K. have difficulty understanding why a party or two so angered the British.  The thing is he put severe restrictions on their freedoms and did not abide by them himself.  Then for months he lied about it.

Further — and this is what angers me almost almost to tears when I recall it — one of the parties was on the eve of the funeral for Prince Philip.  I still get emotional when I consider that The Queen abided by Boris’ COVID restrictions by sitting masked and so alone at the funeral of her husband.  Having ANY sort of party the night before as Boris and his people did is close to unforgivable.

I doubt Boris could have ever recovered politically from that callousness against The Queen and her people.  He certainly gave the British very little reason to forgive him by how he conducted his premiership afterward.

Thus I ended up being right about one thing and one thing only in a very backwards way: he did turn out to be a uniting figure after all.  Almost all agreed he needed to go.

So I find it sad, sad that a man with such talent and opportunity and with what became overwhelming support in 2019 frittered it all away.  And for what?  Esau at least got a nice bowl of stew.

What could have been.  What could have been.